Oh, the burden of being a celebrity parent. On one hand, your children are precious gifts who must be carefully guarded from voracious paparazzi. On the other, they’re liable to grow up and decide that your life’s work isn’t that cool. Thanks a lot, kids!
Such has apparently happened to Adam Sandler, who just confessed to Ellen DeGeneres that his daughters—ages eight and 10—don’t really love his movies. In fact, it seems they get bored every time they finally get permission to watch one.
As the two sat down on Ellen Friday, DeGeneres wondered aloud if any of Sandler’s movies are appropriate for children—since most of them are “very R-rated.” But even the ones that are “PG-13-ish,” as Sandler put it, simply fail to dazzle the minds of his pre-teenage girls.
“I’ll put them on,” Sandler explained. “Because they beg to see them. They’re like, ‘Please, it’s not fair! Let me watch your movies. Those people always yell things at you on the street. I don’t know what the heck they’re talking about.’ So I show them the movies—they demand this—and they get, every time, I’d say about 20 minutes in, and then I see them tuning out, and then I hear them. They’re nervous to say it, but like, ‘Can we watch something else?’”
Sandler is not alone. Angelina Jolie once confessed that her children think her Kung-fu Panda co-star Jack Black is cooler than she is. Matt Damon said during his Martian press tour that his family doesn’t think he’s cool either, saying, “I try to tell them. All the time. My wife doesn’t really even get that either. But that’s all right. I’ll keep them around.” And then there’s Chris Rock, whose kids are equally unimpressed. As the comedian told David Letterman on Late Show, “My kids think I’m so unfunny they’re like, ‘Is there enough money saved up for college? Because at some point, people are gonna realize you’re not funny.’”