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Adam Sandler Is on the AARP Magazine Cover Making Us All Feel So Old

The star of Grown-Ups is finally ... a grown-up?

Gael Cooper
CNET editor Gael Fashingbauer Cooper, a journalist and pop-culture junkie, is co-author of "Whatever Happened to Pudding Pops? The Lost Toys, Tastes and Trends of the '70s and '80s," as well as "The Totally Sweet '90s." She's been a journalist since 1989, working at Mpls.St.Paul Magazine, Twin Cities Sidewalk, the Minneapolis Star Tribune, and NBC News Digital. She's Gen X in birthdate, word and deed. If Marathon candy bars ever come back, she'll be first in line.
Expertise Breaking news, entertainment, lifestyle, travel, food, shopping and deals, product reviews, money and finance, video games, pets, history, books, technology history, generational studies. Credentials
  • Co-author of two Gen X pop-culture encyclopedia for Penguin Books. Won "Headline Writer of the Year"​ award for 2017, 2014 and 2013 from the American Copy Editors Society. Won first place in headline writing from the 2013 Society for Features Journalism.
Gael Cooper
2 min read

Adam Sandler may be one of the last actors you think of in the same sentence as "retired." The actor is 56, but he often plays high-spirited characters younger than his age. So what's he doing on the cover of AARP magazine, the publication of the nonprofit group formerly known as the American Association of Retired Persons?  

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Adam Sandler is on the cover of the October-November 2022 issue of AARP magazine.

AARP

Yep, Sandler is the latest surprising cover boy for AARP, following in the footsteps of the late Luke Perry, who was 50 when he graced the cover in 2016, and Michael J. Fox, who shocked his movie mom, Lea Thompson, when he was the cover boy in 2021 at age 60.

Perry and Fox were both Gen X heartthrobs, but seeing Sandler on AARP might be even more jolting, thanks to his usually youthful screen persona.

The cover story refers to Sandler as "the ultimate man-child," but also addresses how he's taking on more mature, thoughtful roles. In an interview, Sandler talks about needing a hip replacement, and directly addresses his cover boy role.

"I'm getting older," he admits. "That doesn't mean I feel old. I mean, I do when I'm on the basketball court and an 18-year-old kid hears I'm 56 and says, 'Wow! I thought you were younger than that!'"

As with Perry and Fox when they made the AARP cover, some fans just can't believe how old this news makes them feel.

"Oof. Hit me right in the sciatica," one person tweeted. 

Some pointed out that the same issue of AARP is wishing rapper Eminem a happy 50th birthday on Oct. 17, writing, "Adam Sandler and Eminem on AARP magazine. (We're old)."

Maybe the fans should take a tip from Sandler himself, who says in the AARP interview, "I like my age, and it's fun to play my age. It's freeing. I don't have to be true to anything other than what I look like and what I think and what I do in life."