Adam Sandler is easily a favorite when it comes to delivering laughs, but when it comes to fatherhood, the actor takes his role pretty seriously.
Sandler shares daughters Sadie Madison and Sunny Madeline with wife Jackie Sandler (née Titone), whom he met on the set of 1999’s Big Daddy. Adam popped the question in 2002, and the couple wed one year later.
The twosome expanded their family three years later when they welcomed Sadie. Sunny was born in 2008.
Since becoming a dad, Adam hasn’t shied away from sharing his experiences, including how fatherhood has changed him to his new and relatable take on a wild night as a dad. He’s also said they aspire to follow in his footsteps — and they’ve already gotten started.
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Sadie and Sunny starred in projects like 2023’s You Are So Not Invited to My Bat Mitzvah, where they played Adam’s onscreen daughters, and made appearances in 2010’s Grown Ups and 2020’s Hubie Halloween. Most recently, they voiced kid roles (Sadie as Jayda and Sunny as Summer) in Netflix’s Leo, where Adam played the title character, a lizard trying to escape his life as a classroom pet.
Adam is along for the ride to watch Sadie and Sunny grow up. Keep scrolling for some of Adam’s most unforgettable quotes about fatherhood through the years:
2004
Before welcoming Sunny and Sadie, Adam dreamed of being a dad one day. “I just recently started trying, doing the best I can,” he told reporter Paul Fischer before the release of 2004’s Spanglish. “Feels good to try but playing a father, I’m getting a little older. I see now that I’m taking it more serious and I do want that lifestyle and do want children.”
July 2007
During an interview with Jay Leno, Adam said his perspective on life changed after welcoming Sadie. “I always wanted to live, now I want to live a lot more,” he noted. “My striving for life is, like, I just behaved differently now.”
He continued, “I wanna be there for my kid when my kid is older. When I have shots of Southern Comfort and stuff, I always take a multivitamin right after. I had, like, 15 multivitamins the other night, and the next morning it was the healthiest crap I ever took in my life.”
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June 2010
Being a famous dad, it can be tempting to give your children what you never had growing up. But Adam is determined to keep his daughters grounded. He told the Boston Herald, “The idea of my kids being spoiled, I go to sleep thinking about it and I wake up thinking about it. I’m trying to do the right thing. With the amount of money I have, it’s difficult raising children the way that I was raised, as the son of an electrician.”
True to form, he continued with a joke: “I took away the west and north wing of the house from those guys. So they’re not allowed in there.”
June 2014
“My kids give me the most joy, but there are life adjustments. I don’t go out to meet anyone after 9:30 at night,” Adam told KnowMore.tv. “I eat dinner at 6 or 7. If someone makes me stay out until 10:30 at night, I’m angry the entire next day because I’m exhausted.”
Sharing a sweet story, Adam added, “This is wild. Last night, my wife and I were falling asleep at 8 and we said, ‘No, we’re not giving into this sleep. Maybe we should go see a movie after the kids fall asleep.’ Well, the kids weren’t falling. I’m in one room saying, ‘Twenty more minutes until they fall asleep.’ The next thing I know, I walk out of that room and my wife and my other daughter are curled up sleeping. I’m up half the night with the other one. Welcome to parenthood.”
June 2014
“Honestly, at school, I’m like Santa,” Adam told KnowMore.tv. “The kids love me and flock around me. It doesn’t make me cool. I’m just a guy with a lot of kids around him.”
He quipped that he also showers them with In-N-Out burgers, “With extra ketchup.”
April 2017
Though they’ve appeared in a handful of movies alongside their dad, Sadie and Sunny don’t see watching his family-friendly films as a good time.
He confessed they “beg” to see his R-rated movies, but when it comes to PG-13, “Every time, about 20 minutes in, I see them tuning out. Then I hear them, they’re nervous to say but, ‘Can we watch something else?’”
They also want in on the inside joke of fans yelling lines from movies like Big Daddy and Happy Gilmore at him on the street.
“Those people always yell things at you on the street and I don’t know what the heck they’re talking about,” Adam said his daughters tell him. Still, he gushed, “I love both of them more than anything.”
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November 2023
Adam weighed in on his daughters making their marks in Hollywood during an appearance on The Jennifer Hudson Show, saying, “They both like it, they both talk about it.”
Adam added, “I just want them to be happy and this is [the] kind of stuff that they talk about. My older daughter wants to go to college for it and they’re both very good. They both think about it a lot and work hard at it, so we’ll see what happens.”
Sadie, Sunny and Jackie also appeared alongside Adam in Grown Ups, Grown Ups 2 and Pixels.
February 2024
Despite Sadie and Sunny lending their voices to Leo, they’re still typical teenage daughters. “They still don’t talk to you. They go do their thing,” he said at the premiere of his movie Spaceman.
He continued, “They do the best they can, and then they go do their life. I am on the side going, ‘Love you.’ I say ‘I love you’ a lot to them.”
