Adam Sandler’s Acting Teacher Told Him to Quit Acting

Shame on Adam Sandler‘s acting teacher. In a new installment of Variety’s Actors on Actors, Sandler sat down with Brad Pitt and discussed a college acting professor who (mistakenly) urged him to quit the business. While it was Pitt who initially brought up the decades-old debacle, calling it his “favorite Adam Sandler story,” the Uncut Gems star was quick to confirm it, saying, “It was like that.” Take it from the Sandman: some advice is worth ignoring.

During their wide-ranging discussion, Pitt brought up his “favorite Adam Sandler story,” which he said he heard from director Bennett Miller (like Sandler, Miler went to NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts, and he directed Pitt in Moneyball).”You were at NYU, and it was your acting coach, I believe or acting professor,” recalled Pitt. “He took you out for a beer, you guys went to a bar, and he kindly said to you, ‘Think about something else. Listen, you’ve got heart, but you don’t have it. Choose another path.'”

“It was like that,” confirmed Sandler. “He sent a letter –”

“There’s a second part to this story,” continued Pitt (I guess we’ll never know what the letter said). “This is why it’s my favorite Adam Sandler story, and I think it says a lot about you. You ran into him at the height, when you were getting the ultimate payday, you were with a bunch of friends and you run into him at a bar. Anyone would think, that’s the opportunity to rub it in his face. Reportedly, what you did was, you said hi and you introduced him to your friends and you said, ‘This is the only teacher to ever buy me a beer.'”

“Something like that. That’s right,” said Sandler. “I love that. That’s the guy I know, and I think that’s why you’re here after all these years,” said Pitt.

“I love you,” replied Sandler, adding that Pitt never listens to his compliments. “But I gotta tell you, when you tell me I did good in Uncut Gems, that feels good. I can sit in that a little bit. What you’ve been doing over so many years and crushing for so long … I’m so much more comfortable with comedy, and if you’re saying I’m doing well in this stuff, that does feel nice.”

For more on Adam Sandler and Brad Pitt’s Actors on Actors discussion, check out the full video on Variety.

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