Adam Sandler gets attacked by cheetah while on safari

Hollywood star Adam Sandler has told David Letterman's US chat show that he was attacked by a cheetah while on holiday with his family.

The Happy Gilmore star was invited into an enclosure with rescued animals as part of a safari he was on. Sandler was given the opportunity to feed the animal with water, but things started to go wrong when the actor bent down by a small pond.

A video of the incident shows the cheetah move behind the funnyman and leap onto his back as he scented his A-list prey. A nearby keeper then rushed to get the cat off Sandler's back as it dug its claws into his back and arms.

Letterman praised Sandler for his coolness under pressure, but the Little Nicky actor said that was far from the truth.

"A very nice guy let me in with the cheetah and said I could feed the cheetah with my hands, and something went a little bit wrong.

"My friends say I played that pretty cool but I had a stiff neck at the time and when he jumped on me I just thought 'oh my neck'.

"I swear to God when he jumped on me all I was going to do was let him eat me. There was not one part of me that was going to fight back, I was like, 'alright this is how I'm going to go'."

Sandler admitted that he made the error of bending down low to the water, as the cheetah might then have seen him as a threat, or that he was going to drink from the pool.

The actor was visiting Africa to film his new movie Blended alongside Bella Thorne and Drew Barrymore, while he is also currently promoting his latest movie Grown Ups 2, which will hit cinema screens in the UK on August 9th.