Ben Stiller is reflecting on how his kids are sharing the same struggles he went through as a child while growing up with a famous dad.
Appearing on the Thursday, October 23, episode of The Late Show With Stephen Colbert, Ben shared how he discovered the connection while working on his documentary, Stiller & Meara: Nothing Is Lost. (The documentary details his parents, Jerry Stiller and Anne Meara’s marriage and professional career as a comedy act duo, as well as Ben and sister Amy Stiller’s childhood.)
“I mean, the thing is, for us, growing up around my parents, our whole life was around it,” Ben, 59, said of growing up with famous parents. “My kids have the same thing. I had a lot of issues… my parents being away a lot when they were working and their attention being on the work.”
Ben remarked that the work always seemed to come first for his parents, a sentiment his children Ella, 23, and Quin, 20, have since shared about their own childhoods.
“They had to be on the road or they were writing. Even in the apartment, they were working in the other room,” Ben said. “There’s that thing I think when you have parents who are creative or passionate about something that takes them away from, you know, the family life. Everybody has to deal with some version of that and what I learned in talking to my kids as the documentary evolved is they had exactly the same issues with me that I had with my parents.”
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The Zoolander comedian acknowledged that he hadn’t noticed some of the similarities until they came up in the process of making the documentary.
“There’s a conversation with my son in the movie where I talk about how Dad who gets pulled away by people on the street and they would recognize him and my son interrupts and says, ‘Yeah, that’s funny because that just happened to me last week with you.’ Ben told Colbert. “And I was like, ‘Oh yeah, I wasn’t expecting that.’”
Earlier in the interview, Ben also shared his regrets about not making the documentary and learning more about his parents’ relationship with one another before they died.
“You know, as I was starting to make it I really thought, ‘Oh god, I should have done this when they were alive,’” he noted. “But there’s that thing when your parents are around, sometimes you can’t have that perspective, you know, the everyday life stuff just gets in the way of it.”
Following their deaths, Ben said a motivation behind making the documentary was to commemorate them as well as work through his grief over the loss of his parents.
Ben and Amy were inspired to do the film while preparing to sell Anne and Jerry’s home following their deaths in 2015 and 2020, respectively, and the doc features interviews from Ben, Amy, Ben’s wife, Christine Taylor, and the duo’s two children, Ella and Quin. There are also home videos of the family, snippets from Jerry and Anne’s old talk appearances and tape recordings of conversations between the Stillers throughout their lives.
The film details both the high and lows the family experienced over the years, including Anne’s battle with alcoholism. Ben admits in the doc that he held resentment toward how his father avoided his mom’s drinking issues during his childhood. (Ben confirmed in 2023 that Anne eventually got sober after attending therapy.)
“When [my mom] was drinking, my dad never really knew how to handle it,” Ben explains in one scene. “I think he loved her so much and he was so committed to her. Also the act and what they did together was so important, that he had to figure out how to deal with that on his own. But I think I resented him for not acknowledging it to us.”
Ben also details falling into the same habits as his parents despite wanting to avoid their shortcomings, admitting that he occasionally felt absent from his kids’ lives as they were growing up. He shares that Ella doesn’t “ever” remember him being around when she was young, which son Quin agrees with, confessing that being a dad sometimes felt “last” on Ben’s list of priorities.
When Ben details one memory with his father where he was complaining about not getting enough attention from his parents only for Jerry to start talking with a fan in the street, Quin points out that similar things have happened to him and Ella over the years.
“We were out to dinner at a restaurant a few weeks ago, and I was stressed about college stuff and the people there wanted to get, like, a picture with you, and I was so frustrated like, ‘The world just has to stop to get this picture.’ You know what I mean?” Quin recalls, to which Ben nods in agreement.
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Ben also expresses his regret over cutting a then 8-year-old Ella from his 2013 film The Secret Life of Walter Mitty, telling her it was his “worst” mistake. While speaking to Howard Stern in an interview earlier this week, Ben echoed that sentiment, saying it “damaged” their relationship “for years.”
“She was 8, Howard. She was 8,” Ben said while burying his face in his hands, later adding, “It was a good lesson for me. First of all, if you’re going to put your kid in something … put them in a scene you’re never going to cut no matter what.” (Ella has since worked with her dad on multiple projects, including the most recent Happy Gilmore 2.)
Despite any ups and downs, Ben confirms in Stiller & Meara that he has a “strong” relationship with his kids, but has found it impossible to avoid making the same mistakes his own parents made.
“It’s complicated and has at times been strained,” he admits. “When they were young, I did not get it. I thought, ‘Oh, the kids are young, I can work away and be a good dad earning for the family.’ But the bonds you form with your kids when they’re young are so important.”
