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Adam Sandler
 A
genial, laid-back stand-up comic and graduate of NBC's Saturday
Night Live, Brooklyn-born Adam Sandler was a class clown in
Manchester, New Hampshire after his family moved there when
he was six. He has gone on record that Rodney Dangerfield,
Cheech & Chong and repeated viewings of the movie Caddyshack
(1980) were his inspirations, so it was not surprising that
he made his first forays into performing comedy while an undergraduate
at NYU.
While still at school, he also landed a recurring role as
Theo's friend Smitty on the NBC sitcom The Cosby Show. After
dropping out of college and settling in L.A., he hit the local
comedy clubs including the Improv, where Saturday Night Live
alumnus Dennis Miller discovered him.
Miller recommended Sandler to Lorne Michaels, who hired him
as a writer for the series in 1990. Within a year, Sandler
started to make onscreen appearances. Though his gallery of
weirdly off-center dunces--including Iraqi Pete, Canteen Boy
and Cajun Man--quickly caught on with the audience, it was
Opera Man, a bewigged and caped tenor who sings in satirical,
often moronic non sequiturs, that persuaded Michaels to anoint
him a performing regular.
Jack Nicholson
 Jack
Nicholson is the Hollywood celebrity who is most like a
character in some ongoing novel of our times. At the age
of 37, he learned that the woman he had always believed
to be his mother was his grandmother and that his two older
sisters were really his mother June and his Aunt Lorraine.
The soap operaish twist was worthy of Chinatown (1974) a
la Evelyn Mulwray (Faye Dunaway): "She's my sister.
. . she's my daughter. . . she's my sister and my daughter."
Indeed, the timing of his discovery could have influenced
that screenplay written by friend Robert Towne, unless it
was just balmy coincidence that art chose that precise moment
to imitate life in such a way.
Nicholson began his storied career in the Roger Corman-produced
Cry Baby Killer (1958) and over his next ten years in B-movies
would develop a low key acting style that combined the assured
masculinity of old Hollywood types (i.e. Bogart) with the
hipster neurosis of a new generation.
Marisa Tomei
 For
a performer, winning an Oscar can be both a blessing and
a curse. The Academy Award sometimes can lead to bigger
and better roles, or it can lead to stagnation as the actor
tries to live up to unrealistic expectations.
When Marisa Tomei's name was called out as the recipient
of the Best Supporting Actress statue at the 1993 Oscar
telecast, some unkind people began unfounded and nasty rumors
that she was given the award erroneously, particularly as
her competition included such stalwart veterans as Judy
Davis, Joan Plowright, Vanessa Redgrave and Miranda Richardson.
What those wags failed to appreciate was Tomei's finely
wrought comic performance as Mona Lisa Vito, a sassy auto-mechanic
in love with a shady lawyer (Joe Pesci) in My Cousin Vinny
(1992). The heavy Noo Yawk accent she employed in the film
was thanks in part to her upbringing in the Flatbush section
of Brooklyn.
Luis Guzman
 Stocky,
tough-looking Latino character actor of film and TV has
been featured in several films helmed by Sidney Lumet (Family
Business 1989; Q&A 1990; Guilty as Sin 1993). Mustachioed
and curly-haired, Guzman has a wide, expressive face that
does not readily belie his age.
Raised on New York's colorful Lower East Side, he was initially
typecast in ethnic sleazeball parts but graduated to playing
solid working-class citizens such as the recurring role
of Hector Martinez, the father of cop Nicholas Turturro
on the acclaimed TV drama NYPD Blue (ABC, 1993- ). Guzman's
favorite feature role was Luis Valentin in Q&A, a cop
with authentic street credentials and strong family values.
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