Ben Stiller shared rare insight into his personal life when he admitted to making “mistakes” when raising his two adult children, Ella Stiller and son Quinn Stiller.
“Like any parent, I remember things that weren’t happy about my childhood and go, ‘I’ll do better,’” Ben, 59, said while speaking to The Sunday Times in an interview published on Saturday, October 11, after he was asked what he learned not to do from his late parents, Jerry Stiller and Anne Meara.
He continued, “And then I realized it was impossible to avoid making the mistakes they made. I feel like I have a really great relationship with my kids, but it’s complicated and has at times been strained.”
“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,'” Ben noted. “But the bonds you form with your kids when they’re young are so important.”
The Zoolander actor shares Ella, 23, and Quinn, 20, with his wife, Christine Taylor.
Ben went on to admit that he and his sister, Amy Stiller, had a complicated relationship with his late parents, noting that they were not entirely present for their childhoods due to their busy careers in as comedians.
“It totally affected us,” Ben said of how Jerry and Anne’s careers led them to spend many late nights in New York or weeks away in Los Angeles. “I just remember missing them terribly. And when they would come back, my sister and I would act out Jesus Christ Superstar or something in the lounge.”
After Ben opened up about some of the low points in his childhood, he also admitted that he “probably f–ked up more with my kids than my parents did with us.”
Ben shared an example of his parenting mistakes, explaining that he cast Ella in a role in The Secret life of Walter Mitty — which he directed — before he ultimately cut her role out of the 2013 film.
“My son tells me that being a dad might not have been at the top of my list,” he recalled of the decision.
Another way his kids had it hard was when he and Taylor, 54, separated from 2017 to 2020.
“That was a strain on my relationship with the kids,” he explained. “And I’d think, ‘Well, my parents never did that.’ But a long relationship is hard. You lose the freshness. I feel bad about what us breaking up did to the kids, but it was possibly the best thing to happen to Christine and me.”
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Ben recently opened up about his and Taylor’s separation in the documentary Stiller & Meara: Nothing Is Lost.
“When we separated my feeling was like ‘Oh, I’m failing at this’ and look at my parents they have this incredible 50 plus year marriage and I can’t live up to that,” he said in the doc, per People.
However, he and Taylor were able to work on their marriage during the COVID-19 pandemic.
“All of a sudden we were together in the house and during that time I started to make the movie too. So there sort of this coming together. Us talking about what we were going through, our issues, and looking at what my parents had been through too in a way I hadn’t looked at it before,” he said.
This story was originally reported by Parade on Oct 13, 2025, where it first appeared in the News section. Add Parade as a Preferred Source by clicking here.
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