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Benjamin Edward Stiller (born November 30, 1965) is an Emmy-winning American comedian, actor, film producer and director. He is the son of veteran comedians and actors Jerry Stiller and Anne Meara. After beginning his acting career with a play, he wrote several mockumentaries, and was offered two of his own shows, both entitled The Ben Stiller Show. After acting in a few films, Stiller had his directorial debut with Reality Bites, and has since written, starred in, directed, and produced over fifty films and television shows. Stiller's films have grossed $1.38 billion. Stiller is a member of the comedic acting brotherhood known as the Frat Pack. With multiple cameos in music videos, television shows, and films, he may be best known for his roles in Starsky and Hutch, There's Something About Mary, Zoolander, Dodgeball: A True Underdog Story, Meet the Parents, its sequel Meet the Fockers, and Night at the Museum. Throughout his career, Stiller has received several awards and honors including an Emmy Award, several MTV Movie Awards, and a Teen Choice Award. Stiller's most recent role was in the movie The Heartbreak Kid. Trying to cast the lead role of Mel Coplin, an adoptee searching for his biological parents in the wake of his own son's birth in the comedy "Flirting With Disaster" (1996), writer-director David O. Russell knew what he wanted: "a young Dustin Hoffman type, who was kind of urban, kind of smart and ethnic." Ben Stiller, the only son of the venerable husband-and-wife comedy team of Jerry Stiller and Anne Meara, convinced Russell that he could fill the bill. Increasingly busy before and behind the camera, the curly-haired, quirkily handsome actor-writer-director seemed well poised to become the poster boy for Generation X era comedy--regardless of his stated discomfort with such a designation. With decisive roles played by nepotism, "Saturday Night Live" and MTV, Ben Stiller's swift career trajectory may be somewhat paradigmatic to those for whom the name "Barrymore" evokes "Drew" before "John" or "Lionel". Stiller was born in New York City and grew up in Manhattan, the second child of Stiller and Meara. Stiller's father is Jewish and his mother, who is of Irish Catholic background, converted to Judaism after marrying his father. His parents frequently took him on the sets of their appearances, including an appearance on The Mike Douglas Show when he was six. He admitted in an interview that he considered his childhood unusual: "In some ways, it was a show-business upbringing—a lot of traveling, a lot of late nights—not what you'd call traditional." His older sister, actress Amy Stiller, appeared in his movie Dodgeball in a short scene as a waitress at a restaurant. He displayed an early interest in film making and made Super 8 movies with his sister and friends. At 10 years old, he made his acting debut as a guest on his mother's television series Kate McShane. In the late 1970's he performed with NYC's First All Children's Theater in several roles, including the title role in Clever Jack and the Magic Beanstalk. After being inspired by the television show Second City Television while in high school, Stiller realized that he wanted to get involved with sketch comedy. After he graduated from the Calhoun School in New York in 1983, he enrolled as a film student at the University of California, Los Angeles and joined Beta Theta Pi fraternity. After nine months, Stiller left school to move back to New York City. He made his way through acting classes, auditioning, and trying to find an agent. He landed a role in the Broadway revival of John Guare's The House of Blue Leaves, alongside John Mahoney, a play which later garnered four Tonys. During its run, Stiller produced a satirical mockumentary whose principal was fellow actor Mahoney. His comedic work was so well received by the cast and crew of the play that he followed up with a 10 minute short called "The Hustler of Money", a parody of the Martin Scorsese film The Color of Money. The film featured him in a send-up of Tom Cruise's character and Mahoney in the Paul Newman role — only this time as a bowling hustler instead of a pool shark. The short got the attention of Saturday Night Live, which aired it in 1987, and two years later offered him a spot as a writer. In the meantime, he also had a bit part in Steven Spielberg's Empire of the Sun. In 1989, Stiller wrote and appeared on a season of Saturday Night Live as a featured performer. However, since the show did not want him to make any more short films for the show, he left after five shows. He then put together Elvis Stories, a short film about a fictitious tabloid focused on recent sightings of Elvis Presley. The film starred fellow friends and co-stars John Cusack, Jeremy Piven, Mike Myers, Andy Dick, and Jeff Kahn. The film was considered a success, and led him to develop another film entitled Back to Brooklyn for MTV, a music video cable television network. Stiller utilized his connections to land his first professional acting job in the 1985 Lincoln Center revival of John Guare's dark comedy "The House of Blue Leaves" (his mother was in the original production) after two years of struggling. During its run, he made a short comic film with the play's cast (which ended up airing on "Saturday Night Live"). In 1987, Stiller reprised the role of the son, Ronnie Shaughnessy, a would-be papal assassin, for the play's PBS "American Playhouse" production. In that same very productive year, he also made his film acting debut in Steven Spielberg's "Empire of the Sun" and his TV writing and acting debut in a ten-minute short parody of Martin Scorsese's "The Color of Money" for NBC's "Saturday Night Live", in which he offered a devastating caricature of Tom Cruise. He subsequently remained as a featured player and apprentice writer on "SNL" for about a year. (Stiller reportedly left due to creative frustration; the show had limited interest in him directing film clips.) In 1989, he was given his own half-hour comedy/variety show on MTV entitled "The Ben Stiller Show". A prototype to his more elaborate network effort, the series suffered from music video interruptions and the lack of proper format that would have allowed Stiller to showcase his considerable talents. He also continued working in films, playing supporting roles in such diverse misfires and mediocrities as "Hot Pursuit" (1987, with his father), "Fresh Horses" (1988), "That's Adequate" (1989, with his parents and sister Amy), "Next of Kin" (1989), the Bette Midler weeper "Stella" (1990) and "Highway to Hell" (1992, another family get-together). A career turning point came when Fox TV signed him for "The Ben Stiller Show" (1992-93), a sketch comedy program with an emphasis on pop culture parodies. An inspired spoof combining "The Munsters" and "Cape Fear" to create "Cape Munster" (which featured Stiller skillfully evoking a hybrid of Robert De Niro and Eddie Munster) was fairly emblematic of the show's irreverent sensibility. Other sketches, featuring skewerings of Bruce Springsteen and Tom Cruise, The Pig-Latin Lover, the amusement park Oliver Stoneland and the evil sock-puppet Skank made the show one of the hippest and funniest on TV, but it was canceled in its first season. Nevertheless, Stiller shared a writing Emmy for his efforts. MTV was so impressed with Back to Brooklyn that they offered Producer Jim Jones and Director Stiller (aka No Puzzle Productions) a 13-episode show in the experimental "vid-com" format entitled The Ben Stiller Show, mixing short comedy sketches with popular music videos. It was one of five such shows that MTV planned in this format, designed to take over after the end of the long run of "Remote Control". The show parodied various television shows, music stars, and films. It starred Stiller, along with main writer Jeff Khan and Harry O'Reilly with occasional appearances by his parents Jerry Stiller and Anne Meara, sister Amy Stiller, as well as cameos by Melina Kanakaredis, "Grandpa" Al Lewis, and the entire multitude of Club MTV dancers including Camille Donatacci, future wife of Kelsey Grammer. Particularly notable were Stiller's impersonations of Tom Cruise, Al Pacino, and William Shatner, and the entire 1990 FOX lineup of shows including Booker, Alien Nation and Married with Children. This show was the proving ground for much of Stiller's earliest style development and new gag ideas. Although the show was canceled after its first season, it led to another show entitled The Ben Stiller Show on the Fox Network in 1992. The Ben Stiller Show aired 12 episodes on FOX, with a 13th unaired episode broadcast by Comedy Central in a later revival. Among the principal writers on The Ben Stiller Show were Stiller himself and Judd Apatow, and the show featured the ensemble cast of Stiller, Janeane Garofalo, Andy Dick, and Bob Odenkirk. Both Denise Richards and Jeanne Tripplehorn appeared as extras in various episodes. Throughout its short run, The Ben Stiller Show frequently appeared at the bottom of the ratings, even as it garnered critical acclaim and eventually won the Emmy for "Outstanding Individual Achievement in Writing in a Variety or Music Program" after it was cancelled. After a few film roles in the early 1990s, such as Stella, Highway to Hell, and a cameo in The Nutt House, Stiller devoted his time on writing, fund raising, recruiting cast members, and directing Reality Bites. The film was produced by Danny DeVito (who later directed Stiller's 2003 film Duplex and produced the 2004 film Along Came Polly). Stiller also acted in the film, which was praised by some critics. He joined his parents in the family film Heavyweights, in which he played two different roles, and then had a brief uncredited role in Adam Sandler's Happy Gilmore. Next, he had lead roles in If Lucy Fell and Flirting with Disaster before he tackled his next directorial effort with, The Cable Guy which starred Jim Carrey. Stiller once again was featured in his own film as twins. The film received mixed reviews and performed poorly at the box office, but was noted for being the film for which the highest salary was paid to a star for his work in just one film. Jim Carrey received $20 million for his work in the movie. The film also connected Stiller with future Frat Pack members Jack Black and Owen Wilson. Also in 1996, MTV invited Stiller to host the VH1 Fashion Awards. Along with SNL writer Drake Sather, Stiller developed a short film for the awards about a male model known as Derek Zoolander. It was so well received that Stiller developed another short film about the character for the 1997 VH1 Fashion Awards and finally remade the skit into a film. Stiller segued to the big screen as a filmmaker making his feature directorial bow with "Reality Bites" (1994), an old-fashioned romance marketed as a "Generation X" comedy. Co-starred with Winona Ryder and Ethan Hawke, he played a neurotic, workaholic music TV exec who occupies one point in the love triangle. The film received some positive notices--especially for Ryder's performance--and Stiller was commended for his skill with actors but his command of narrative storytelling was deemed shaky in some quarters. In any event, the ostensible target audiences largely steered clear. Though it still remains too early to make any sweeping generalizations about Stiller's screen persona, one may note that, in his choices, he has eschewed conventional romantic leads in favor of problematic eccentrics. Though occasionally (and from certain angles) quite handsome on camera, Stiller has tended to undercut or lampoon his looks. As a sketch performer, he delighted in mocking such presumed studs as Cruise and U2's Bono. A not atypical film role had him playing an obnoxious fitness guru, the baddie, in the inferior Disney comedy "Heavyweights" (1995). This project was notable for reuniting him with Judd Apatow, here a producer-writer and formerly Stiller's collaborator on his Fox series. Stiller returned to the director's chair for (and played a small role in) "The Cable Guy" (1996). Though budgeted at a formidable $40 million (half of which went to its ascendant star), this Jim Carrey vehicle dared to offer a change-of-pace as the rubber-faced comic played a darker, more menacing variation of his usual persona. Though the film has its share of admirers, "The Cable Guy" proved to be the first flop of Carrey's career as a superstar and stalled Stiller's behind-the-scenes work. Also in 1996, Stiller enjoyed a solid art-house success with the starring role in "Flirting with Disaster", a rare straightforward romantic lead. He also brought manic energy to his portrayal of a conceptual artist with designs on Sarah Jessica Parker in the unsuccessful romantic comedy "If Lucy Fell". He finished out the year with a (shrewdly?) uncredited turn in fellow "SNL" alum Adam Sandler's feature vehicle "Happy Gilmore", as the smarmy operator of a nursing home. 1998, however, proved to be Stiller's breakout year as a performer. He began with an understated turn as the partner of a reclusive investigator in "Zero Effect", directed by Jake Kasdan. On the heels of that comic portrayal, he played a nebbish haunted by his high school prom date who hires a private detective to track her down in the Farrelly brothers' low-brow surprise blockbuster "There's Something About Mary". Ironically, he was not the studio's first choice for the role and had to fight for it. But he proved to be perfect, willing to go to any lengths for the part. He captured the awkwardness of a gawky teenager (especially when he caught his private parts in his zipper on the night of the prom) and the odd, forlorn adult version of the same character. As an actor, he was willing to undertake potentially embarrassing scenes and mine them for their humor. Applying a similar technique to dramatic material, Stiller essayed a weaselly college professor who embarks on an affair with his best friend's wife in Neil LaBute's "Your Friends and Neighbors" and capped the year with an all-out tour de force portraying drug-addicted screenwriter Jerry Stahl in "Permanent Midnight". Stiller was next featured alongside longtime friend Janeane Garofalo in "Mystery Men" (1999), a disappointing comedy centered around a band of off-kilter superheroes. He rebounded the following year with a starring role in the oddly charming sleeper romance "Keeping the Faith", playing a rabbi who finds himself falling for the same childhood friend (Jenna Elfman) his best friend (Edward Norton as a Catholic priest) is also in love with. That same year he had a bona fide box-office hit with "Meet the Parents", starring as a man driven to desperation by the overprotective and overbearing father (Robert De Niro) of his would-be fiancée (Teri Polo). The feel-bad brand of slapstick comedy connected with a large audience, and Stiller proved not only as lovable a loser as he had in "There's Something About Mary", but a worthy screen partner of De Niro. Acting turns in the independents "The Suburbans" and the aptly named "The Independent" rounded out 2000 for the actor. In 1998, Stiller put aside his directing ambitions to star in There's Something About Mary alongside Cameron Diaz, which skyrocketed Stiller's career. In that same year he also starred in several dramas including Zero Effect, Your Friends & Neighbors, and Permanent Midnight. Stiller was invited to take part in hosting the Music Video awards, for which he developed a parody of the Backstreet Boys and performed a sketch with his father commenting on his current career. In 1999, he starred in three films, including Mystery Men where he played a superhero wannabe called Mr. Furious. He returned to directing with a new spoof television series for FOX entitled Heat Vision and Jack, starring Jack Black. However, the show was not picked up by FOX after its pilot episode and the series was cancelled. 2000 would be a better year for Stiller as he starred in four more films including one of his most recognizable roles, as a male nurse named Gaylord Focker in Meet the Parents. MTV again invited him to make another short film and he developed Mission: Improbable, a spoof of Tom Cruise's roles in the films Risky Business, Magnolia, Cocktail, and Mission: Impossible. In 2001, Stiller would direct his third feature film, Zoolander, which focused on the character Derek Zoolander (which was also played by Stiller) that he developed for the VH1 Fashion Awards. The film featured multiple cameos from a variety of celebrities including Donald Trump, Paris Hilton, Lenny Kravitz, Heidi Klum, and David Bowie among others. The film was banned in Malaysia (as the plot centered on an assassination attempt of a Malaysian prime minister) and shots of the World Trade Center had to be digitally removed and hidden for the film's release after the September 11 terrorist attacks. After Stiller invited Owen Wilson to star in Zoolander, Wilson returned the favor and invited Stiller to play Chas Tenenbaum in The Royal Tenenbaums. Over the next two years, Stiller continued on with the lackluster box office film Duplex and several cameos in Orange County and Nobody Knows Anything!. He also guest-starred on several television shows, including an appearance in an episode of the television series King Of Queens as Arthur's father (Stiller's father Jerry Stiller) in a flashback. He also made a special guest appearance on World Wrestling Entertainment's WWE Raw. Stiller returned to the big screen in 2001 as a director and actor, helming and starring in the often riotous though somewhat poorly received "Zoolander", a send-up of the modeling world at once smart and silly. Released shortly after the tragic events of September 11th, the film lost some of its comedic steam but would find life as a cult favorite. He rejoined his "Zoolander" nemesis and frequent co-star Owen Wilson in "The Royal Tenenbaums", a masterful serio-comedy co-written by Wilson and director Wes Anderson and starring Gene Hackman, Anjelica Huston, Gwyneth Paltrow, Stiller and Luke Wilson as a family with great potential that slowly falls apart as they separate. Stiller's portrayal of anxiety-plagued, rage-ridden, red Adidas warm-up suit-garbed widower Chas featured some of the film's most honestly moving moments and garnered the performer critical accolades. In 2002, after a cameo in Jake Kasdan's comedy "Orange County," Stiller appeared onscreen in "Run Ronnie Run", a feature adaptation of a popular sketch from the off-kilter HBO comedy series "Mr. Show Starring Bob and David". He next co-starred with Drew Barrymore in the flop "The Duplex" (2003), a black comedy about the lengths one will go to in order to rent the perfect apartment in New York City directed by Danny DeVito, but rebounded with mildly amusing and modest hit comedy "Along Came Polly" (2004), in which he played a risk assessment expert who, after his wife cheats on him during their honeymoon, learns to take chances when he falls for a free spirit (Jennifer Aniston). Stiller had an amusing recurring stint on the 2004 season of the HBO sit-com "Curb Your Enthusiasm" playing himself as bedeviled by Larry David when the two are tapped to co-star in a stage production of Mel Brooks' "The Producers," and then he took on the role of TV cop Dave Starsky in the parody-minded 2004 version of the ABC cop drama "Starsky & Hutch" opposite his frequent collaborator Owen Wilson. While merely mildly amusing, that film was head and shoulders above Stiller's next effort, "Envy" (2004), an epic misfire co-starring Jack Black and directed by Barry Levison. Unfunny and incoherent in the extreme and begging the question why so many talented people agreed to make the film, "Envy" also relied too heavily on the most played-out elements of Stiller's now-familiar comedic persona. The actor was slightly more amusing as the puffy-haired, mustached White Goodman, the ruthless if undereducated head of the Purple Cobras team, in the sports comedy "Dodge Ball" (2004). By this time, Stiller was clearly established as a central figure in what many characterized as a comedic Rat Pack-style clique of actors who frequently teamed up and/or cameoed in each other's films--the group also included Vince Vaughn, Will Ferrell, Owen and Luke Wilson and actor Steve Carell. The actor rebounded successfully at the end of the year with another stint as Gaylord "Greg" Focker in the popular comedy sequel "Meet the Fockers" (2004), which added his character's doting parents (played by Dustin Hoffman and Barbra Streisand) into the family fold. Stiller then lent his distinctive voice to “Madagascar” (2005), Disney’s animated adventure about four zoo animals who escape and inadvertently find themselves in Africa where the city slickers struggle to survive in the wild. His next project was "A Night at the Museum" (lensed 2006), a family comedy about a night security guard in the Museum of Natural History who unwittingly unleashes a curse that brings to life the bugs and animals on display. 2004 would be Stiller's busiest year as he acted in six different films. All six of the films were comedies, and include some of his highest grossing films. They include Starsky & Hutch, Envy, Dodgeball: A True Underdog Story, an uncredited cameo in Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy, Along Came Polly, and Meet the Fockers. Although Envy only grossed $14.5 million worldwide, his most successful film of the year was Meet the Fockers, which grossed over $516.5 million worldwide. In 2005, Stiller would begin his first attempt at a computer-animated film with Madagascar, which performed so well at the box office that it resulted in a sequel due in 2008. In 2006, Stiller had two cameos, one in School for Scoundrels, and Tenacious D in: The Pick of Destiny, of which he was the executive producer. In December, Stiller starred in the lead role of Night at the Museum. Although the film received many poor reviews, the film earned over $115 million in ten days. His most recent film, The Heartbreak Kid, was released on October 5, 2007. Stiller has several upcoming films in 2008 and 2009, including Madagascar 2: The Crate Escape. He will provide a voice for one of the characters in The Smurfs, and has completed production for Tropic Thunder, a film he is directing and starring in about a group of actors in a war film who must become commandos themselves when a problem during filming ensues. In February 2007, it was announced that Stiller would star alongside Jason Schwartzman in The Marc Pease Experience as a former theater teacher and star alongside Tom Cruise in a comedy adaptation of The Hardy Boys entitled Hardy Men. When speaking about working with Tom Cruise Stiller said, "I'd be very excited about working with him, because I've always been a huge fan". Stiller will also produce the upcoming Date School. Stiller runs together with Stuart Cornfeld the Red Hour Productions company. The company will produce the comedy television show Gods Behaving Badly based on Marie Phillips' novel. In 2009, he will star in the sequel Night at the Museum 2: Escape from the Smithsonian and Hardy Men. Stiller is the "acknowledged leader" of the Frat Pack, a core group of actors that have worked together in multiple films. The group includes actors Jack Black, Will Ferrell, Vince Vaughn, Owen Wilson, Luke Wilson, and Steve Carell. Stiller has been acknowledged as the leader of the group due to his multiple cameos and for his offering the other members movie roles in films he is involved with while producing and directing. He has co-starred the most with member Owen Wilson, in nine different films including: The Cable Guy (1996), Permanent Midnight (1998), Heat Vision and Jack (1999) (TV), Meet the Parents (2000), Zoolander (2001), The Royal Tenenbaums (2001), Starsky & Hutch (2004), Meet the Fockers (2004), and Night at the Museum (2006). Of the thirty-two primary films that are considered Frat Pack films, Stiller has been involved with twenty of them, in either acting, writing, producing, or directing them. He is also the only member of this group to have appeared in a Brat Pack film (Fresh Horses). Stiller is 5 ft 8 in (1.7 m) tall and left-handed. He dated several actresses during his early television and film career including Jeanne Tripplehorn, Janeane Garofalo, Calista Flockhart, and Amanda Peet. In May 2000, Stiller married Christine Taylor, whom he met while filming a never-broadcast television pilot for the FOX network called Heat Vision and Jack, which starred Jack Black. The couple appeared onscreen together in Zoolander and Dodgeball: A True Underdog Story. He and Taylor reside in Hollywood Hills and have a daughter, Ella Olivia, born April 10, 2002, and a son, Quinlin Dempsey, born July 10, 2005. Stiller is a supporter of the Democratic Party and donated money to John Kerry's 2004 U.S. Presidential campaign. In February 2007, Stiller attended a fundraiser for Barack Obama and later donated to Obama's, John Edwards, and Hillary Clinton's 2008 U.S. Presidential campaigns. Stiller is also a supporter of several charities including Declare Yourself, the Elizabeth Glaser Pediatric AIDS Foundation, and the Starlight Starbright Children's Foundation. In a 1999 interview with GQ and later in a 2001 interview with Hollywood.com, Stiller stated that he had bipolar disorder, an illness he said that ran in his family. In two interviews in November and December 2006, Stiller claimed that this earlier interview's comment about the disorder was false. In one interview he said: "I said jokingly in GQ that I was, like, crazy, and it came out as: Ben Stiller, bipolar manic-depressive!" Stiller frequently does impersonations of many of his favorite performers, including Bono, Tom Cruise, Bruce Springsteen, and David Blaine. He admitted in an interview with Parade that Robert Klein, George Carlin, and Jimmie Walker were inspirations for his comedy career. |
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