Blake Clark
Blake Clark is an actor, born 1946.
Blake Clark came out of stand-up rather than drama school, and the voice tells you: a Georgia rasp that sounds like it has been shouting over a bar for thirty years. Television found him first, as Harry Turner on Home Improvement and Chet Hunter on Boy Meets World, both of them versions of the same gruff, decent, faintly alarming older man.
Most of the film work is Adam Sandler's doing. Clark has turned up in Sandler productions since the 1990s, usually for a scene or two of pure volume: the farmer in The Waterboy, the barfly in Mr. Deeds, a demon in Little Nicky, the father in 50 First Dates who rebuilds the same day for his daughter. He is a reliable spike of noise in a comedy that needs one, and he tends to be funnier the smaller the part is.
The role most people know without knowing his name is Slinky Dog. He inherited it from his friend Jim Varney, who died in 2000, first for a stage version in 2008 and then from Toy Story 3 onward, and he plays it with a gentleness that nothing else in the filmography prepares you for. The Coen brothers also used him twice, in Intolerable Cruelty and The Ladykillers, which is a better joke than either film managed to make of it.
Movies (38)
- Toy Story 5 (2026)
- Toy Story 4 (2019)
- Toy Story 3 (2010)
- Grown Ups (2010)
- Rango (2011)
- The Mask (1994)
- 50 First Dates (2004)
- That's My Boy (2012)
- Little Nicky (2000)
- The Waterboy (1998)
- The Ridiculous 6 (2015)
- Mr. Deeds (2002)
- Bedtime Stories (2008)
- Hawaiian Vacation (2011)
- Nothing to Lose (1997)
- I Now Pronounce You Chuck & Larry (2007)
- St. Elmo's Fire (1985)
- The Benchwarmers (2006)
- The Ladykillers (2004)
- Toys (1992)
- Intolerable Cruelty (2003)
- Hubie Halloween (2020)
- Johnny Handsome (1989)
- Eight Crazy Nights (2002)
- Fatal Instinct (1993)
- Love Potion No. 9 (1992)
- Netflix Tudum 2025 (2025)
- Strange Wilderness (2008)
- Corky Romano (2001)
- Ladybugs (1992)
TV (13)
Where to start with Blake Clark
The honest entry point is Toy Story 3. Slinky is a supporting part in a very good film, and Clark's warmth in it is the least characteristic thing he does, which makes it the most interesting. Toy Story 4 carries it on.
For the comedian rather than the voice, 50 First Dates gives him the closest thing to a real character he has had in a Sandler film, and The Waterboy gives him the loudest. The Mask is the early cameo people forget he is in. If you want the television that made him familiar, Home Improvement and Boy Meets World are both exactly what you remember. Intolerable Cruelty is the odd one out and worth a look purely for the mismatch.
The Sandler films
Nearly thirty years of turning up in Adam Sandler films, usually for one scene, usually shouting. The Waterboy and 50 First Dates give him the most, and the rest is a standing arrangement between friends.
The voice work
He inherited Slinky Dog from Jim Varney, who was a friend, and has played the part across three films and the shorts since. It is the widest-reach work by an enormous margin.
The sitcoms and early films
The nineties, where the recognisable face came from. Boy Meets World and Home Improvement are the two long sitcom runs, and The Mask is the film part most people have seen without placing him.