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, he went on to a successful career in feature films, including starring roles in the comedy films Deuce Bigalow: Male Gigolo, The Hot Chick, The Benchwarmers, and Grown Ups.
Early life
Schneider was born in San Francisco, California, and grew up in the nearby suburb of Pacifica. His parents are Pilar (née Monroe), a former kindergarten teacher and ex-school board president, and Marvin Schneider, a real estate broker. His father was Jewish and his mother was Catholic. Schneider's maternal grandmother was a Filipina who met and married his grandfather, a white American army private, while he was stationed in the Philippines. His mixed background is a common theme in his comedy acts. His older brother, John, is a producer. Schneider graduated from Terra Nova High School in 1982.
Career
Early career
Schneider started his stand-up comedy career while still in high school, opening for San Francisco favorites Head On, a band managed by his older brother John. After high school, he 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 the late night NBC sketch comedy series Saturday Night Live.
Saturday Night Live
Schneider was hired at Saturday Night Live in 1988. Schneider swiftly graduated from writer and featured player to full cast member. From 1990 to 1994 at SNL, he played such roles as "Tiny Elvis" and "Orgasm Guy". His best known recurring character was Richard Laymer, 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. Schneider is featured in the video release The Bad Boys of Saturday Night Live, along with colleagues Adam Sandler, Chris Rock, David Spade, and Chris Farley.
Recurring SNL characters
- The Richmeister, an office worker who annoys people by giving them nicknames as they make copies.
- Carlo, from the Il Cantore Restaurant sketches
- The Sensitive Naked Man, a nude man who gives advice to other characters
Feature films, sitcoms, and endorsements
After leaving SNL, Schneider played supporting roles in a series of movies including Surf Ninjas, 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 starred in the 1999 feature film Deuce Bigalow: Male Gigolo, a tale of a fish-tank cleaner who incurs a massive debt and is forced to become a "man-whore." This was followed by The Animal, about a man given animal powers by a mad scientist; The Hot Chick, wherein the mind of a petty thief played by 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. The latter movie was not well received by critics or moviegoers, and as a result, Schneider won a 2005 Worst Actor Razzie Award for his role in the film.
In 2006, Schneider co-starred in the baseball-themed family comedy The Benchwarmers, along with his fellow SNL alumnus David Spade as well as Jon Heder. Other film roles include Schneider's appearance with Jim Henson's Muppets in the 1999 film Muppets from Space, and his role as a San Francisco hobo in the 2004 remake of Around the World in 80 Days.
Schneider's directorial debut, the comedy Big Stan, was released in some overseas markets during the fall of 2008, with a U.S. release in early 2009. In the film, he starred as a con artist who is arrested for perpetrating real-estate scams. He is sentenced to prison, so he takes a crash-course in martial arts to survive incarceration.
Schneider has also appeared in numerous comedies starring his SNL comrade Adam Sandler, most recently in 2010's Grown Ups. 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; a prison inmate; and Sandler's one-eyed Hawaiian sidekick, Ula. Schneider has uttered the line "You can do it!" as a running gag in Sandler's films The Waterboy, Little Nicky, 50 First Dates, The Longest Yard, and Bedtime Stories, as well as in a deleted scene from Click. (A sample of Schneider saying the phrase also turns up in the song "Original Prankster" by The Offspring.) Returning the favor, Sandler appeared in a cameo to spout the same line in Schneider's The Animal, wherein, as a reference, Adam Sandler utters: "Yeah! You can do it!" Sandler also showed up briefly in Schneider's The Hot Chick. Schneider narrated Sandler's 2002 animated movie Eight Crazy Nights, and voiced the part of a Chinese waiter. Schneider also had an uncredited cameo as a Canadian-Japanese wedding-chapel minister in the 2007 Sandler-Kevin James comedy I Now Pronounce You Chuck & Larry, and played a Palestinian cab driver who serves as the title character's nemesis in the 2008 Sandler film You Don't Mess with the Zohan.
Schneider played a variety of roles in the 2005 TV special Back to Norm, starring another former SNL player Norm Macdonald, and appeared on episodes of the popular TV shows Seinfeld and Ally McBeal. Schneider hosted the Sports Illustrated: Swimsuit '97 TV special, and the 2005 Teen Choice Awards, and was a frequent guest on NBC's late-night variety program The Tonight Show with Jay Leno. (In Schneider's appearance with Leno on the July 24, 2007 episode of The Tonight Show, he showed up in drag as actress Lindsay Lohan after Lohan cancelled following a controversial arrest for driving under the influence.
Besides his efforts in movies and television, Schneider released his first comedy album Registered Offender in July 2010. Registered Offender is composed of audio sketches and songs, with Schneider himself doing all of the character voices on the recording. He also revived his stand-up comedy career in 2010 with an international tour of theaters, clubs and casinos.
Schneider appeared in the music video for country singer Neal McCoy's "Billy's Got His Beer Goggles On", as the song's title character. McCoy and Schneider met 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.
Schneider starred as the title character in the CBS-TV situation comedy Rob, which was loosely based on his real life. The series was canceled by CBS in May 2012. Since 2015, he has produced, directed and starred in Real Rob, a sitcom that follows his life and includes his real-life wife Patricia and daughter Miranda. Netflix has released one season of 8 episodes so far.
Schneider is the official celebrity spokesperson for the Taiwan Tourism Bureau and the Ten Ren Tea company in Taipei.
Schneider was spokesperson for State Farm Insurance, but was dropped in 2014 due to his anti-vaccination views.
In May 2016, Schneider was featured as a special guest on the Let's Play webseries Game Grumps, commentating over Midway's Mortal Kombat Trilogy.
Criticism
In a January 2005 Oscar preview, movie reviewer Patrick Goldstein commented that that year's Best Picture nominees were "ignored, unloved and turned down flat by most of the same studios that ... bankroll hundreds of sequels, including a follow-up to Deuce Bigalow: Male Gigolo, a film that was sadly overlooked at Oscar time because apparently nobody had the foresight to invent a category for Best Running Penis Joke Delivered by a Third-Rate Comic."
Schneider retaliated by placing an ad in the Los Angeles Times two weeks later, commenting that Goldstein was unqualified to opine this because he had never won the Pulitzer Prize, or any other journalistic award, because, he remarked, "they haven't invented a category for Best Third-Rate, Unfunny Pompous Reporter Who's Never Been Acknowledged by His Peers." Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times intervened by saying that, "Schneider can dish it out, but he can't take it." Then responded," He's not so good at dishing it out either." Ebert went on to point out on his site that Goldstein won a National Headliner Award, a Los Angeles Press Club Award, a RockCritics.com award, and the Publicists' Guild award for lifetime achievement. Schneider later publicly admitted that he later found out that Goldstein won the Lifetime Achievement Publicist Guild Award and apologized. He then remarked, "My only regret is that he (Goldstein) got a little famous out of it."
Personal life
Schneider has a daughter with former model London King, musician Elle King, who was born in 1989.
In 1996, Schneider established the Rob Schneider Music Foundation. The foundation returned music education to Pacifica's elementary schools by paying the teachers' salaries and providing funds for instruments and other equipment. Prior to Schneider's efforts, the school system did not have music education programs for many years.
Schneider once co-owned the DNA Lounge, a San Francisco nightclub.
On April 23, 2011, Schneider married television producer Patricia Azarcoya Arce, in Beverly Hills, California. Their first child, Miranda Scarlett Schneider, was born in 2012. The couple welcomed their second daughter, Madeline Robbie Schneider, in September 2016.
In 2013, Schneider switched political parties from the Democratic Party to the Republican Party, explaining: "The state of California is a mess, and the super majority of Democrats is not working. I’ve been a lifelong Democrat and I have to switch over because it no longer serves the people of this great state."
Anti-vaccination activism
Schneider has been an outspoken critic of childhood vaccinations, promoting the refuted claim made by multiple celebrities that they are dangerous and cause autism, which is contrary to the scientific consensus on the subject. In an interview with News10 in Sacramento, Schneider opined that “The efficacy of these shots have not been proven ... And the toxicity of these things â€" we’re having more and more side effects. We’re having more and more autism.†He also views the actions from the state to mandate vaccinations as government overreach: “It’s illegal. You can’t make people do procedures that they don’t want. The parents have to be the ones who make the decisions for what’s best for our kids. It can’t be the government saying that. It’s against the Nuremberg Laws." Schneider's statements have been discredited as lacking any factual basis.
Schneider has actively fought the passage of two California laws, California Assembly Bill 2109 and California Senate Bill 277, which both intended to make childhood vaccination exemptions harder to obtain. On September 28, 2012, Schneider and California State Assemblyman Tim Donnelly spoke at the "Medical Freedom Rally," where they urged California Governor Jerry Brown to veto Assembly Bill 2109, which would have made it more difficult for parents to utilize philosophical reasons for exemptions from mandatory childhood vaccinations. While the bill was not vetoed, Governor Brown added a signing message instructing the Department of Health to add a religious exemption and to make sure the process is not overly burdensome to parents. In 2015, Schneider fought against California Senate Bill 277, which removed exemptions to mandatory vaccinations due to personal beliefs, even leaving a phone message to California state Assemblywoman and bill co-author Lorena Gonzalez saying that he would spend money against her in her next re-election. Gonzalez, in an interview with The Washington Times, said that she found the message to be disturbing, but upon calling back, she said "he was actually much nicer to me, but let’s be honest … that is 20 mins of my life I’ll never get back arguing that vaccines don’t cause autism with Deuce Bigalow, male gigolo. #vaccinateyourkids.â€
Filmography
Film
Voice-overs in film
Web series
Television series
Video games
References
External links
- Official website
- Rob Schneider on IMDb