Rob Schneider on working with Sharon Stone: ‘Her beauty intimidated me’

Rob Schneider is a comedian and writer, best known for Deuce Bigalow: Male Gigolo. Here, the 60-year-old shares his mother’s effective discipline strategy, working with Sharon Stone and why his marriage works.

“My daughters are coming to Australia with me. They want to go to Steve Irwin’s Australia Zoo to pet a koala.”

My Filipino maternal grandmother, Victoria, was a war survivor. She married an American soldier at 15. He tried to bring her to the US, but his family wasn’t keen and so it never happened. I was eight when I met her in her homeland. She had fallen down the stairs and could no longer speak.

My paternal grandmother, Molly, had a thick Yiddish accent. There was room on her lap for all us kids: it was big. Nobody smelled like her – she smelled like a bag of dust, and even at four years old I knew that wasn’t a good smell. She died when I was five.

My mother, Pilar, was a teacher and I used to watch her teach. She was so kind and the children loved her, but I never saw the “pinch and twist” there, like she did with us at home. She would pinch us to get our attention, and then twist to make sure the bad behaviour wouldn’t be replicated.

My mother spoke five languages. She was able to be educated because during World War II, her sister Rose found money in a cave, along with other things she thought might be valuable that looked like pineapples.[The money paid for her education and the “pineapples” were hand grenades.]

The Japanese killed my mother’s two brothers, but she held no bitterness. She knew it was war and that you can’t blame a whole nationality for anything. Mine wasn’t a smooth childhood, but I felt a sense of empowerment and strength from her. She died in 2021.

My father, Marvin, was Jewish. The jokes were good on my father’s side of the family, but the food was tastier on my mother’s. As the youngest, I learnt pretty early that creating laughs was a way to get attention.

I was 16 when I discovered stand-up comedy and thought, “I want to do this.” Hence, I didn’t spend much time in school. My dad bought me an old police car for $500 and I worked in a petrol station in the afternoons and sold shoes on the weekend.

At night I drove to The Comedy Store and watched greats like Robin Williams and Jerry Seinfeld. I was a kid going, “This is the greatest time of my life.”

In the early ’90s, I got to work with Sharon Stone on [NBC sketch comedy series] Saturday Night Live. Her beauty intimidated me. When I later met supermodels, I remember thinking, “I just don’t know what I would do in a relationship with that.” I dated an orthodontist and some flight attendants who were more my speed.

I was doing stand-up when I met my first wife, model London King. We ran off together just for fun. Our daughter, Elle, 34, is a country musician. I love her and want her to be successful on her own terms, not by those dictated by the industry.

I was promoting my movie Big Stan in Mexico when I met my current wife, Patricia. She was a producer on the TV shows I did. After we met, I couldn’t stop thinking about her, so I invited her to the premiere that evening. Then I invited her to fly to LA for dinner with me. She was smart and brought her mother and we had a great time.

Patricia has more fun than anyone I’ve ever known and I wanted that in my life. She is also one of the most beautiful women in the world. What makes our marriage work is that we genuinely want the other to succeed.

My 2022 movie Daddy Daughter Trip just reached No. 1 in South America. My job is to share any success with Patricia and our two daughters, Miranda, 11, and Madeline, 7.

My daughters are coming to Australia with me. They want to go to Steve Irwin’s Australia Zoo to pet a koala. Not an hour goes by that they don’t talk about it.

Rob Schneider plays the Enmore Theatre, Sydney, June 12.

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