Ben Stiller

Actor

• Born: November 30, 1965
• Place of Birth: New York, New York

ACTOR, DIRECTOR, AND PRODUCER

A hard-working Hollywood performer, Stiller has forged a solid career as an actor, producer, and director.

AREA OF ACHIEVEMENT: Entertainment

Early Life

Ben Stiller was born to Gerald (Jerry) Isaac Stiller and Anne Meara. Jerry and Anne worked as comedians and performers under the act name of Stiller and Meara. They starred in the Compass Players (now Second City), an improvisation company, and were popular comedic figures on The Ed Sullivan Show. Jerry would later play George Costanza’s father on Seinfeld, a situation comedy that ran nine seasons on the National Broadcasting Company (NBC). Anne’s family raised her as Irish Catholic, but when she married Jerry she converted to Judaism. Jerry’s ancestors were Austrian Jewish immigrants, and many of Anne’s ancestors were Russian Jewish immigrants. At age thirteen, Ben Stiller remembers trying to memorize his lines for a play and for his Bar Mitzvah at the same time.

Stiller and his older sister Amy would travel to the sets of their parents’ films and television shows. Their first act was playing “Chopsticks” on the violin—after just three lessons—on The Mike Douglas Show. At age ten, Stiller saw the film Jaws (1975), directed by Steven Spielberg, which sparked his interest in filmmaking. With his parents as entertainment influences, Stiller began shooting his own films, often of family parties and special events, using a Kodak Super 8 camera.

Stiller graduated from Calhoun High School in New York. In 1983, he attended film school at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), but after nine months he dropped out and returned home. Stiller eventually took acting classes and found an agent. He worked as a busboy at Café Central in New York to supplement his income while he searched for acting opportunities.

Life’s Work

In 1985, to bolster his reputation and gain experience after leaving college, Ben Stiller received his first stage role as Ronnie Shaughnessy in an Off-Broadway revival of John Guare's The House of Blue Leaves, which originally premiered Off-Broadway in 1971. He played a disturbed kid who tries to blow up the pope as his motorcade passes by. The production was a success and won four Tony Awards. Stiller then shot his own film—a six-minute short that parodied the Martin Scorsese film The Color of Money (1986). The producer of Saturday Night Live viewed his clip and offered Stiller a position for one season as the youngest cast member and writer. After one season, Stiller moved on to act in The Enough Show, which was produced by MTV and shown in 1992 on Fox Network.

At twenty-six years old, Stiller starred in the The Ben Stiller Show on MTV. Comedians Janeane Garofalo, Andy Dick, and Bob Odenkirk were also part of the cast. The show received good reviews but did not have a large audience, probably because it aired opposite the popular CBS program 60 Minutes. Stiller’s show, consisting of short comedic skits, parodied films and entertainers, such as U2’s Bono and musician Bruce Springsteen. Stiller appeared in almost every thirty-minute episode. The show was canceled after thirteen episodes, but it won an Emmy Award for writing in 1993, three months after the cancellation. Comedy Central later reran the series.

After his show’s cancellation, Stiller set out to direct his first feature-length film, Reality Bites (1994). This film was based on Generation X, those born between 1965 and 1980. Stiller put the film together on a forty-two-day shooting schedule and a twelve-million-dollar budget.

In 1995, Stiller’s relationship with fellow actor Jeanne Tripplehorn ended after five years. This prompted him to travel to Ireland to try to connect with his Irish relatives. When he returned to the United States, he focused more on work and directed his second film, The Cable Guy (1996), starring Jim Carrey, Matthew Broderick, and Leslie Mann.

In 1999, Stiller teamed with Garofalo to write Feel This Book: An Essential Guide to Self-Empowerment, Spiritual Supremacy, and Sexual Satisfaction, published by Ballantine. Stiller also created a production company called Red Hour Productions to give him more creative freedom and control over his work. That year he also starred in There's Something About Mary (1999), which became one of the most well-loved comedies of the late 1990s. On May 13, 2000, Stiller married actor Christine Taylor on a secluded beach in Kauai, Hawaii. Although he grew up in a Jewish family, Stiller has reflected his heritage in few of his films. In Keeping the Faith (2000), however, Stiller played a rabbi. To prepare for the religious film that explored the challenges of faith in comedic ways, Stiller shadowed a New York City rabbi for a week to get an idea of what a rabbi’s normal day was like.

The early 2000s saw Stiller appear in some of his most notable and enduring roles. The film Meet the Parents, released in 2000 and starring Stiller as Greg Focker, earned three hundred million dollars for Universal Pictures and spent five weeks atop the box office. He reprised the role of Focker in the sequel films Meet the Fockers (2004) and Little Fockers (2010). In Zoolander (2001), Stiller played a twenty-seven-year-old narcissist interested in modeling yet part of an international espionage group. He reprised the role in Zoolander 2 (2016), which was a widespread failure at the box office, and in the television film Zoolander: Super Model (2016). In 2004, Stiller appeared in a host of comedies, including Along Came Polly, alongside Jennifer Aniston; Starsky & Hutch, with Owen Wilson; Dodgeball: A True Underdog Story; and Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy. After lending his voice to the lion Alex in the animated children's comedy Madagascar (2005), Stiller starred as museum night guard Larry Daley in the family film Night at the Museum (2006). He reprised the former role in the animated films Madagascar: Escape 2 Africa (2008) and Madagascar 3: Europe's Most Wanted (2012); he reprised the latter role in the sequels Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian (2009) and Night at the Museum: Secret of the Tomb (2016). Stiller also starred in Tropic Thunder (2008), a satirical action comedy, alongside Jack Black and Robert Downey Jr.

In 2013, Stiller starred in, directed, and produced The Secret Life of Walter Mitty, a remake of James Thurber's 1939 short story by the same name. The film received mixed critical reviews but was well-received by the public. The following year, he costarred in the romantic comedy While We're Young (2014), alongside Naomi Watts. In 2017, Stiller costarred in the comedy drama The Meyerowitz Stories, about an estranged family who reunite to celebrate their father, alongside Adam Sandler, Dustin Hoffman, and Emma Thompson.

In addition to his acting career, Stiller has also worked behind the camera as a producer and director, including on many of his biggest hits, such as Zoolander and Tropic Thunder. His 2019 biographical miniseries Escape at Dannemore, about the escape of two prisoners with the help of a prison employee, earned Stiller two Emmy Award nominations: for Outstanding Limited Series and for Outstanding Directing for a Limited Series, Movie or Dramatic Special. In the 2020s, after several personal challenges, including a cancer diagnosis and the death of both of his parents, Stiller turned his attention more toward directing and producing, serving as executive producer and director of the Emmy-winning Apple TV+ series Severance (2022– ) and as executive producer of another Apple TV+ series, High Desert (2023), starring Patricia Arquette. Stiller also took on smaller roles in comedies like Hubie Halloween (2020) and Bros (2022) during that period. He starred in Nutcrackers, which premiered at the Toronto Film Festival in September 2024, playing Mike, who travels to Ohio to care for his four nephews after their parents are killed in a car crash. It was his first time playing the lead in seven years.

Significance

In 1993, Ben Stiller won an Emmy Award for Outstanding Individual Achievement in Writing in a Variety or Music Program for The Ben Stiller Show. In 2001, Stiller won the American Comedy Award for funniest actor in Meet the Parents. He was nominated for the same award previously in 1999 for There’s Something About Mary. For the MTV Movie Awards he was nominated eight times and won three: in 1999 for Best Fight in There’s Something About Mary; in 2000 for Best Comedic Performance in Meet the Parents; and in 2005 for Best Villain in Dodgeball: A True Underdog Story. At the Hollywood Film Festival he received the Comedy of the Year honor in 2008 for his role in Tropic Thunder. In 2010, Stiller was nominated by the People’s Choice Awards as Favorite Comedy Star. He received Emmy nominations for his directing work on Escape at Dannemora and Severance, and he also won a Peabody Award for Severance in 2022.

Bibliography

DAgostino, Ryan. "Ben Stiller Sees the World Differently Now." Esquire, 22 Feb. 2022, www.esquire.com/entertainment/tv/a39139152/ben-stiller-severance-profile/. Accessed 3 Sept. 2024.

Denby, David. “The Contender.” New Yorker. Condé Nast, 24 Jan. 2005. Web. 31 Mar. 2016

De Vries, Hilary. “The Overachiever.” LA Times. Los Angeles Times, 1 Aug. 1999. Web. 31 Mar. 2016.

Dougherty, Terri. Ben Stiller. Detroit: Lucent, 2007. Print.

Ehrlich, David. "The Best and Worst of Ben Stiller, A to Z." Rolling Stone. Rolling Stone, 13 Feb. 2016. Web. 31 Mar. 2016.

Friend, Tad. "Funny Is Money." New Yorker. Condé Nast, 25 June 2012. Web. 31 Mar. 2016.

Lang, Brent. "Why Ben Stiller Returned to Acting for Nutcrackers: Farm Animals, Untrained Child Actors, and David Gordon Greene." Variety, 3 Sept. 2024, variety.com/2024/film/markets-festivals/ben-stiller-acting-return-nutcrackers-david-gordon-green-severance-1236128104/. Accessed 3 Sept. 2024.

Thompson, Alex. "Ben Stiller Opens Up About the Death That Delayed Zoolander 2 Nearly 15 Years." Esquire. Hearst Communications, 12 Feb. 2016. Web. 31 Mar. 2015.