Sinbad
Sinbad is an actor, born 1956.
Stand-up was always the engine. David Adkins, working as Sinbad, built a following through his own HBO specials and then used television as the delivery system, most durably as Coach Walter Oakes on A Different World from 1987 to 1991. Born in Benton Harbor, Michigan in 1956, he arrived with a stage act that was clean without being toothless, and the family-film career followed logically from that.
His comic instrument is volume with no menace in it. He can be the loudest person in a scene while remaining the least threatening, which is why he could headline films aimed squarely at children and still be funny to whoever brought them. Houseguest and First Kid both run on it, and both give him somebody smaller and more irritated to talk at. Jingle All the Way is his biggest theatrical role and works because the character's mania never curdles into cruelty.
The voice work fits the same profile. Riley in Homeward Bound II, Roper in Planes, and above all Mr. Smiley in Steven Universe, where a cheerful surface with something tired underneath turned out to be exactly what an animated series needed.
He was less served by the film industry than his talent warranted, and the theatrical roles thinned after the 1990s. His most recent credit here is Benny in STRAW in 2025.
Movies (15)
- STRAW (2025)
- Coneheads (1993)
- Jingle All the Way (1996)
- Planes (2013)
- Good Burger (1997)
- Time Out: The Truth About HIV, AIDS and You (1992)
- Homeward Bound II: Lost in San Francisco (1996)
- First Kid (1996)
- Necessary Roughness (1991)
- The Meteor Man (1993)
- Hansel & Gretel (2002)
- Michael Bolton's Big, Sexy Valentine's Day Special (2017)
- Houseguest (1995)
- 2 Minutes of Fame (2020)
- The Cherokee Kid (1996)
TV (7)
Where to start with Sinbad
The right starting point is a sitcom. A Different World gives you the thing his films rarely had room for, which is Sinbad reacting rather than performing.
Houseguest is the best of his star vehicles and the one with actual comic construction, and Jingle All the Way is the most widely seen, a Christmas film that has aged into something stranger than it was. Coneheads and First Kid are the nineties comedy machine at work, Good Burger is the one an entire generation quotes, and The Meteor Man is the overlooked one. For his voice work, Steven Universe is genuinely the best thing on this list, and Planes is for the children in the room. STRAW is the most recent and the most serious.