Rob Schneider

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Rob Schneider
Rob Schneider
Birth name	Robert Michael Schneider
Born	October 31, 1963 (age 43) San Francisco, California, USA
Spouse(s)	London King (1988 - 1990) (divorced) 1 child
Notable roles	Deuce Bigalow: Male Gigolo Clive/Jessica in The Hot Chick

Robert Michael Schneider (born October 31, 1963) is an American actor, comedian, screenwriter, and director. A stand-up comic and veteran of the NBC sketch-comedy series Saturday Night Live, Schneider went on to a career in feature films, including starring roles in the comedies Deuce Bigalow: Male Gigolo and The Hot Chick.

Contents 1 Biography 1.1 Career 1.2 Personal life 1.3 Public image, criticism and parody 2 Trivia 3 Filmography 4 External links

[edit] Biography

[edit] Career

Schneider started his stand-up comedy career shortly after high school. The Pacifica, California native played Bay Area nightclubs such as the Holy City Zoo and the Other Cafe, and was a regular guest on local radio programs. After opening a show by comedian Dennis Miller in 1987, Schneider won a slot on HBO's 13th Annual Young Comedians special, which was hosted by Miller. Schneider's appearance on the HBO special led to a position as a writer for NBC's long-running sketch-comedy series Saturday Night Live.

He was hired at SNL in 1988, and swiftly graduated from writer and featured player to full cast member. From 1990-1994 at SNL, he played such roles as "Tiny Elvis" and "Orgasm Guy." His best known recurring character was "Rich" - an office worker whose desk was stuck beside the photocopier, and who addressed each of his fellow employees with an endless stream of annoying nicknames.

Leaving SNL, Schneider played supporting roles in a series of movies including Judge Dredd, The Beverly Hillbillies, Demolition Man and Down Periscope. He also appeared in a recurring part on the TV series Coach. In 1996, he co-starred in the NBC sit-com Men Behaving Badly, an American take on the hit British series of the same name. The U.S. version ran for two seasons.

Schneider honed a persona that was hapless, but vulnerable and sweet-natured. He made use of that guise as the star of feature-film comedies, starting in 1999 with the box-office and video success Deuce Bigalow: Male Gigolo - the cheerfully scatological tale of a fish-tank cleaner who incurs a massive debt and is forced to become a "man-whore" with an inept pimp (comedian Eddie Griffin). This was followed by The Animal, about a nebbish who is given animal powers by a mad scientist; The Hot Chick, wherein the brain of a petty thief (Schneider) is mystically switched into the body of a pretty, but mean-spirited high-school cheerleader (Rachel McAdams); and the sequel Deuce Bigalow: European Gigolo, reuniting Schneider with Griffin. In 2006, Schneider co-starred in the baseball-themed family comedy The Benchwarmers, along with his fellow SNL alumnus David Spade, and Jon Heder of the cult film Napoleon Dynamite.

Schneider's directorial debut was the 2006 comedy Big Stan, in which he stars as a con artist who must survive a stint in prison. On June 29, 2006, Schneider collapsed from heat exhaustion and food poisoning on the set of Big Stan, but he returned to work the following day.

Subsequently, Schneider took on his first major dramatic role in the fantasy Juliana and the Medicine Fish, playing a father who is trying to save his troubled fishing lodge while salvaging his relationship with his twelve-year-old daughter.

Schneider also has appeared in comedies starring Adam Sandler, another SNL alumnus. The comedic characters Schneider plays in these films include an overly enthusiastic Cajun man who proclaims the catch-phrase, "You can do it!”; an amiable Middle Eastern delivery boy; and Sandler’s one-eyed Hawaiian sidekick, Ula.

Schneider is also a frequent guest on NBC’s late-night variety program The Tonight Show with Jay Leno.

Besides his efforts in movies and television, Schneider appeared in the music video for country singer Neil McCoy's "Billy's Got His Beer Goggles On", as the song's title character. Schneider met McCoy while the two went on a USO tour in support of U.S. troops two months after the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.

[edit] Personal life

Schneider was born in San Francisco, California and grew up in the nearby suburb of Pacifica. He is the son of Jewish-American real-estate broker Marvin Schneider and Pilar Monroe, a former kindergarten teacher and ex-school board president; his maternal grandfather was a European-American soldier and his maternal grandmother was Filipina. Schneider's mother has made cameo appearances in her son's films, playing a cheerleading contest judge in The Hot Chick, a restaurant patron in Deuce Bigalow: Male Gigolo, and a nosy neighbor in The Animal.

A graduate of Terra Nova High School in 1981, Schneider started the "Rob Schneider Music Foundation" in 1996. The foundation brought back music education to Pacifica's elementary schools, by paying the teachers' salaries and providing funds for instruments and other equipment. Prior to the establishment of Schneider's foundation, twenty years had passed without music education in those schools.

Schneider is a single father with a daughter named Elle who is a Seventeen magazine model. He currently owns homes in San Francisco and in Southern California.

[edit] Public image, criticism and parody

Schneider has gone on record in defense of political satirist Bill Maher, condemned anti-Semitic remarks by actor/director Mel Gibson, and engaged in a number of high-profile disputes with film critics who criticized his work.

Taking out a full-page ad in Variety, Schneider defended Maher's right to free speech after Maher was assailed for comments on the subject of the September 11, 2001 attacks.

In January 2005, film critic Patrick Goldstein of the Los Angeles Times said in an article that Deuce Bigalow: European Gigolo was overlooked for an Academy Award because "nobody had the foresight to invent a category for Best Running Penis Joke Delivered by a Third-Rate Comic." Schneider responded two weeks later with full-page ads in Daily Variety and The Hollywood Reporter, saying he had done research and found that Mr. Goldstein had never won any journalistic awards, commenting, "Maybe you didn't win a Pulitzer Prize because they haven't invented a category for Best Third-Rate, Unfunny Pompous Reporter Who's Never Been Acknowledged by His Peers." [1]

In August 2005, film critic Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times responded to the Schneider-Goldstein fracas in his review for Deuce Bigalow: European Gigolo. While noting that an online search showed that Goldstein had won a National Headliner Award, a Los Angeles Press Club Award, a RockCritics.com award, and the Publicists' Guild award for lifetime achievement, Ebert said, "As chance would have it, I have won the Pulitzer Prize, and so I am qualified. Speaking in my official capacity as a Pulitzer Prize winner, Mr. Schneider, your movie sucks." [2]

In a later interview with Stuff magazine, Schneider called Ebert an "ass" and said, "I'm told he's not nice to the people he works with." Ebert rejected the accusation, and reaffirmed his opinion of the film, stating, "...if he's going to persist in making bad movies, he's going to have to grow accustomed to reading bad reviews." [3]

Following anti-Semitic remarks made by Mel Gibson when he was arrested for a DUI in late July 2006, Schneider became the first actor to announce publicly that he would not work with Gibson. [4] Schneider took out a Variety ad that excoriated Gibson for his behavior, and criticized the Hollywood community for its knee-jerk response to the incident and its probable concern with the financial impact of Gibson's predicament. Schneider also used the ad to make sarcastic references to his own experiences directing the film Big Stan.

In Schneider's movies, the main character often undergoes some type of transformation, be it an unlikely career change, or a supernatural or science-fictional transmogrification. This formula was spoofed on the satirical animated television series South Park, in the episode "The Biggest Douche in the Universe." (The title refers to television psychic John Edward, and not to Schneider.) In the show, trailers are shown for a series of movies that feature Schneider becoming a stapler, a carrot, the South Park character Kenny, etc. Asked about being parodied on South Park, Schneider responded in an About.com interview: "I loved it. That was genius. I thought the only thing, they were too nice to me...When you’re spoofed by the best people in the business, that’s an honor."

[edit] Trivia

• Schneider is a practicing environmentalist. He served as host for the Environmental Media Awards, and he drives a Toyota Prius hybrid automobile.
• He hosted the Sports Illustrated: Swimsuit '97 TV special.
• He co-hosted the 2005 Teen Choice Awards.
• He appeared with Jim Henson's Muppets in the 1999 film Muppets from Space.
• He played a variety of roles in the 2005 TV special Back to Norm, starring fellow SNL alum Norm MacDonald.
• In the 2004 remake of Around the World in 80 Days, Schneider played a San Francisco hobo.
• He narrated Adam Sandler's 2002 animated movie Eight Crazy Nights, and voiced the part of a Chinese waiter.
• Schneider appeared on episodes of the popular TV shows Seinfeld and Ally McBeal.
• He was featured in the video release The Bad Boys of Saturday Night Live, along with Adam Sandler, Chris Rock, David Spade and Chris Farley.
• Schneider won a 2005 Worst Actor Razzie Award for his role in Deuce Bigalow: European Gigolo.[5]
• He has said the line "You can do it!" in Adam Sandler's films The Waterboy, Little Nicky, The Longest Yard, and in a deleted scene in Click. Sandler said the same line in Schneider's The Animal.
• Schneider is a devoted fan of the San Francisco Giants baseball team.
• He owns a West Highland white terrier named Oscar who has appeared in short films with Adam Sandler's bulldog.

[edit] Filmography

• Martians Go Home (1990)
• Necessary Roughness (1991)
• Home Alone 2: Lost in New York (1992)
• The Beverly Hillbillies (1993)
• Demolition Man (1993)
• Surf Ninjas (1993)
• Judge Dredd (1995)
• The Adventures of Pinocchio (1996)
• Down Periscope (1996)
• The Waterboy (1998)
• The Wedding Singer (1998) (Uncredited)
• Susan's Plan (1998)
• Knock Off (1998)
• Deuce Bigalow: Male Gigolo (1999)
• Muppets from Space (1999)
• Big Daddy (1999)
• Little Nicky (2000)
• The Animal (2001)
• Eight Crazy Nights (2002) (voice)
• Mr. Deeds (2002)
• The Hot Chick (2002)
• Around the World in 80 Days (2004)
• 50 First Dates (2004)
• Deuce Bigalow: European Gigolo (2005)
• The Longest Yard (2005)
• American Crude (2005)
• Little Man (2006)
• The Benchwarmers (2006)
• Shark Bait (2006) (voice)
• Click (2006)
• Grandma's Boy (2006)
• Big Stan (2007) (Post-Production)

[edit] External links

• Official website
• Rob Schneider at the Internet Movie Database
• The Rob Schneider Music Foundation
• Environmental Media Awards