A happy kind of guy, comic Adam Richard Sandler (born 1966) was born on this day in Brooklyn, New York. The youngest of four children, he grew up as the perpetual class clown.

He once joked, “God gave me a deformed-looking head... I enjoy entertaining people with it.”

After graduating from NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts, he was discovered by Dennis Miller and joined Saturday Night Live in 1990. On SNL, he sang hilarious songs (Remember the Chanukah Song?) and created unforgettable characters like Opera Man and Cajun Man.

After five years, he launched Happy Madison Productions and became a box office juggernaut. “I’m just a buffoon,” he said. “That’s all I want to be.”

His films—Happy Gilmore (1996), The Wedding Singer (1998, with Drew Barrymore), The Waterboy (1998), and Big Daddy (1999)—were smash hits. The 2001 Guinness World Records listed him as Hollywood’s highest-paid actor, earning $49.5 million that year.

“I really don’t pay attention to what the world says about my movies,” he explained. “I just care about what my buddies think.”

Adam Sandler is a loyal friend, a devoted family man, and a reminder that laughter can be a powerful medicine. His humor, sometimes goofy, sometimes unexpectedly tender, touches something deeper: the part of us that just wants to be seen and accepted, quirks and all.