Ben Stiller is a bona fide comedy superstar. With major hits like There’s Something About Mary, Meet the Parents, and Tropic Thunder under his belt, he’s easily one of the most recognizable comedic actors of our time. He’s also one of the most unique, so it’s fair to assume that people wouldn’t have any trouble identifying the comedian when they cross paths with him. But that isn’t actually the case according to Stiller, who says that he gets mixed up with one of his contemporaries pretty frequently.

When Adam Sandler received the Mark Twain Prize for American Humor in 2023, Stiller told Entertainment Weekly that he and Sandler “get mistaken for each other all the time.” “So, just like, in life, it’s always like, ‘Yo, Sandler!’” he continued. During an appearance on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon the following year, Stiller elaborated on the phenomenon, saying, “People always will yell out to him or to me, and then he’ll text me, and he’ll say, like, ‘I was in Italy, and someone said, ‘Ben Stiller, I love you!’ Or someone will say, like, ‘Oh man, Click changed my life’ to me.” Pointing out the error doesn’t seem to help, either, because, as Stiller explained to Fallon, “I’ll say, ‘No, I’m not Adam Sandler. I’m Ben Stiller.’ And then they say, ‘Who?’”

In a 2025 interview with Josh Horowitz, Stiller said, “I usually don’t correct them and I say, ‘Thank you,’ and then I just send the video to Adam. And he’ll do the same thing with me, too.” He went on to say, “When I correct people, and I tell them I’m not Adam Sandler, they’re like, ‘Yeah, yeah, yeah, whatever.’ Because I don’t think they think I’m Adam Sandler, they just see me and they’re saying, ‘Adam Sandler,’ you know what I mean?”

Sandler shared one of his own experiences a few years earlier, telling Jimmy Kimmel that he once played a pick-up basketball game with a guy who was weirded out by his presence and kept staring at him. The man was so distracted by Sandler that his friends kept yelling at him for not paying attention to what he was doing. Finally, the guy asked Sandler, “Are you Ben Stiller?” “I said, ‘Yes I am,’ and then I realized, he thinks I’m Stiller, so I can foul a little more,” Sandler joked.