Best Known As: Star of There's Something About Mary and Zoolander
The son of the New York comedy team Anne Meara and Jerry Stiller, Ben Stiller went from making short comedy films in the early 1990s to starring in box office hits such as There's Something About Mary (1998) and Meet the Parents (2000, opposite Robert DeNiro). Stiller started out in the movies in a bit part in Steven Spielberg's Empire of the Sun (1988). He had a short-lived stint on MTV in 1990, and in 1992 landed his own comedy sketch show on the Fox network. A critic's favorite that helped launch the careers of Andy Dick and Janeane Garofalo, the show was nonetheless cancelled after 12 episodes. Stiller then directed Reality Bites (1994, with Winona Ryder), and its success led to directing Jim Carrey in The Cable Guy (1996). Stiller has since become a staple of box office comedies, appearing in about four movies a year and popping up on TV on shows such as Arrested Development and The Simpsons. His films include Mystery Men (1999, with William H. Macy); Zoolander (2001, with frequent co-star Owen Wilson); The Royal Tenenbaums (2001, co-starring Gene Hackman); Along Came Polly (2004, with Jennifer Aniston); Dodgeball: A True Underdog Story (2004, with Vince Vaughn; Meet the Fockers (2004, with Barbra Streisand; Madagascar (2005, as the voice of Alex); Night at the Museum (2006, with Dick Van Dyke); and Tropic Thunder (2008, starring Robert Downey, Jr.).
For Mystery Men Stiller reunited with former TV co-star and writing partner Janeane Garofalo (the film also featured Hank Azaria and Paul Reubens)... Stiller is married to actress Christine Taylor, who played Marcia in The Brady Bunch Movie (1995) and Matilda in Zoolander.
Career Highlights: Flirting With Disaster, Zero Effect, Permanent Midnight
First Major Screen Credit: Fresh Horses (1988)
Biography
As the scion of the Jerry Stiller-Anne Meara comic dynasty, Ben Stiller's decision to establish himself as a comic writer and actor seemed altogether preordained.
Born in New York City on November 30, 1965, Stiller began to shoot his own comic films from the age of ten -- cathartic 8 mm epics that found the young man exacting hilarious revenge on the school-yard bullies who tormented him. After high-school graduation, Stiller attended UCLA and landed bit parts in several features, notably the Steven Spielberg-directed, Tom Stoppard and Menno Meyjes-scripted, late 1987 opus Empire of the Sun, David Anspaugh's Fresh Horses (1988), and the John Erman-directed Bette Midler vehicle Stella (1989).
Meanwhile, Stiller continued to turn out comedy shorts, including the 30-minute Elvis Stories (1989), a spoof of obsessive Elvis fans featuring an already-established John Cusack. One of Stiller's shorts, a Tom Cruise parody called The Hustler of Money, won him a spot as a writer and player on Saturday Night Live in 1989. His stint on the show was short-lived, but led to his own eponymous series, The Ben Stiller Show, first on MTV (1990) and later on Fox (1992-1993). Tagged as too inventive and unconventional for the majority of viewers, the program, in its first incarnation, offered an impromptu "backstage" look at television comedy. In its second incarnation, it featured SNL-style skits that spoofed popular culture, as performed by Stiller's cast of regular comics: himself, Andy Dick, Janeane Garofalo, Bob Odenkirk, and John F. O'Donohue. Recurring segments included a hybrid of Beverly Hills 90210 and Melrose Place called "Melrose Heights 902102402"; a dating program called "Studs" that featured sexually and romantically inexperienced, backward Amish guests; a version of the reality show Cops that unfolded in Salem, MA, and featured witch-hunters instead of law enforcement officers, segments from Stiller's "video diary," relaying day-to-day events in his life, and many, many others. The program failed to draw a substantial audience, and folded within a couple of months on each network, but Stiller netted an Emmy for comedy writing in 1993.
The following year, Stiller debuted as a feature film director with the twentysomething angst romcom Reality Bites (1994), in which he also starred alongside Winona Ryder and a memorably grungy Ethan Hawke. The film was a relative critical and commercial success and scored with Gen-Xers; unfortunately, Stiller's next directorial effort, 1996's The Cable Guy, flopped. A black comedy that cast Jim Carrey as the psychotic title character, who perpetually molests client Matthew Broderick and refuses to leave his side, the film failed to register with critics and audiences, largely because of its uncertain approach to the material. After a small part as nursing-home orderly Hal in the Adam Sandler comedy Happy Gilmore (1996), Stiller rebounded with a starring role in David O. Russell's Flirting With Disaster (1996). The relatively positive reception afforded to that comedy helped to balance out the relative failure of Stiller's other film that year, If Lucy Fell. It was not until two years later, however, that Stiller truly stepped into the limelight. Thanks to starring roles in three wildly, wickedly different films, he emerged as an actor of versatility, equally adept at playing sensitive nice guys and malevolent hellraisers. In the smash gross-out comedy There's Something About Mary (1998), Stiller appeared as the former type, making comic history for outrageous sight gags that involved misplaced bodily fluids and mangled genitalia. That same summer, Stiller did time as a gleefully adulterous theatrical instructor (with an irritating habit of gabbing during sex) in Neil LaBute's jet-black evisceration of contemporary sexual mores, Your Friends and Neighbors. Finally, Stiller starred in the intensely graphic and disturbing addiction drama Permanent Midnight, earning critical acclaim for his portrayal of writer-cum-heroin addict Jerry Stahl -- a personal friend of the Stiller family from Stahl's days scripting the TV series ALF.
Now fully capable of holding his own in Hollywood, with the license to prove it, Stiller starred alongside William H. Macy, Paul Reubens, Hank Azaria, and pal Janeane Garofalo in the buttered popcorn blockbuster Mystery Men (1999) as the leader of a group of unconventional superheroes. Stiller also landed a supporting role in The Suburbans, a comedy about the former members of a defunct new wave band. The following year, Stiller starred as a rabbi smitten with the same woman as his best friend, a Catholic priest (Edward Norton), in the well-received romantic comedy Keeping the Faith (2000), which Norton also co-produced and directed. Stiller found his widest audience up to that point, however, with the Jay Roach-directed madcap comedy Meet the Parents. As the tale of a nutty father-in-law to be (Robert De Niro) who wreaks unchecked havoc on his daughter's intended (Stiller) via covert CIA operations and incessant interrogation, this disastrously humorous tale of electrical interference gone wild scored with ticket-buyers and qualified as the top box-office draw during the holiday season of 2000.
In the autumn of 2001, Stiller brought one of his most popular MTV Video Music Awards incarnations to the big screen in the outrageously silly male-model comedy Zoolander, in which he successfully teamed with (real-life friend) Owen Wilson to carry stupidity to new heights.
In 2001 Stiller once again teamed with Wes Anderson collaborator Wilson for the widely praised comedy drama The Royal Tenenbaums. Cast as the estranged son of eccentric parents who returns home, Stiller infused his unmistakable comic touch with an affecting sense of drama that found him holding his ground opposite such dramatic heavies as Gene Hackman and Anjelica Huston. Though his work in 2002 offered little more than a few cameo performances and some vocal contributions to various animated children's shows, the busy comedic actor returned to the big screen for the 2003 comedy Duplex, directed by Danny DeVito. Though the film pairs Stiller and Hollywood bombshell Drew Barrymore as a couple willing to go to horrific extremes to land the much-desired eponymous living space, reviews were unkind and the comedy died a quick death at the box office. Stiller's next film -- the romantic comedy Along Came Polly -- fared considerably better on a fiscal level, but suffers from one unshakable problem: the complete implausibility of the central premise. Moreover, to many, it seemed almost desperate, at times, to top There's Something About Mary from the twin standpoints of scatology and raunch.
Spring 2004 promised a rebound when the electrifying duo of Stiller and Owen Wilson returned to the big screen with director Todd Phillips' celluloid recycling job Starsky & Hutch. Though Stiller and Wilson seemed the ideal pair for such a conceptually rich re-imagining of 1970s television, and the film boasted wonderful villainous turns by rapper Snoop Dogg and Vince Vaughn, reviews were once again lackluster and the film struggled to find an audience. Yet Starsky & Hutch did actually reap a profit, which (in a business sense) placed it miles ahead of Stiller's next film. Released a mere two months after Starsky & Hutch, the Barry Levinson comedy Envy sports a wacky premise; it explores the comic rivalry that erupts between two longtime friends and neighbors when one invents a product that makes dog excrement disappear. It also boasts a marvelous cast, replete with Stiller, the maniacal Jack Black, and the brilliant Christopher Walken. But for whatever reason (speculated by some as the film's inability to exploit the invention at the story's center) the film's sense of humor failed to catch fire and Envy died a quick box-office death. Stiller fared better with the ribald, anarchic summer 2004 comedy Dodgeball: A True Underdog Story, starring himself, Vince Vaughn, and Rip Torn.
For the following two years, Stiller once again contented himself largely with bit parts (2004's Anchorman: the Legend of Ron Burgundy, 2006's Tenacious D in the Pick of Destiny) until the Christmas 2006 release A Night at the Museum. In this effects-heavy fantasy, adapted from the popular children's book by Milan Trenc, Stiller plays Larry Daley, the new night watchman at New York City's Museum of Natural History, who discovers that the exhibits all spring to life after hours, from a giant skeletal Tyrannosaurus Rex to a waxen Teddy Roosevelt -- and seem content to hold Larry hostage. With supporting turns from such old pros as Dick Van Dyke and Mickey Rooney (reunited onscreen for one of the first occasions since 1969's The Comic) and magnificent special effects, the effort split critical opinion, but shot up to become one of the top three box-office draws during the holiday season of 2006.
Meanwhile, Stiller signed on to team with the Farrelly brothers for The Heartbreak Kid (2007), a remake of the 1972 Elaine May comedy of the same title; he also produced Blades of Glory, a comedy with Will Ferrell and Jon Heder as rival figure-skating champions vying with one another for Olympic gold. ~ Rebecca Flint Marx, All Movie Guide
After beginning his acting career with a play, Stiller 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/or produced over fifty films and television shows. His films have grossed more than $2.1 billion, with an average of $78 million per film.[2] In 2008, he starred in the film Tropic Thunder, which he also co-wrote, co-produced, and directed.
Stiller was born in New York City. His father, Jerry Stiller, is Jewish and his mother Anne Meara, who is of Irish Catholic background, converted to Judaism after marrying his father.[3][4] His parents frequently took him on the sets of their appearances, including an appearance on The Mike Douglas Show when he was six.[5] 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."[6] His sister, actress Amy Stiller, has made appearances in many of his productions, including The Ben Stiller Show as the Bride of Frankenstein, Reality Bites as a psychic phone operator, and most recently, Tropic Thunder as a script supervisor.
He displayed an early interest in film making and made Super 8 movies with his sister and friends.[7] At 10 years old, he made his acting debut as a guest on his mother's television series Kate McShane. In the late 1970s he performed with the New York City troupe NYC's First All Children's Theater, performing in several roles, including the title role in Clever Jack and the Magic Beanstalk.[8] 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.[8]
Stiller attended the Cathedral School in and graduated from the Calhoun School in New York in 1983. He started performing on the cabaret circuit as opening act to the cabaret siren Jadin Wong. Stiller then enrolled as a film student at the University of California, Los Angeles. 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.[9]
Acting career
Beginning career
Stiller landed a role in the Broadway revival of John Guare's The House of Blue Leaves, alongside John Mahoney; the production would garner four Tony Awards.[9] 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.[9] 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 more short films for the show, he left after five shows.[9] He then put together Elvis Stories, a short film about a fictitious tabloid focused on recent sightings of Elvis Presley. The film starred 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.
MTV was so impressed with Back to Brooklyn that they offered producer Jim Jones and director Stiller's No Puzzle Productions a 13-episode show in the experimental "vid-com" format. Entitled The Ben Stiller Show, this series mixed comedy sketches with music videos. 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 Kanakaredes, "Grandpa" Al Lewis, and the multitude of Club MTV dancers including Camille Donatacci, future wife of Kelsey Grammer. Notable were Stiller's impersonations of Tom Cruise, Al Pacino, and William Shatner, and the 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 and Judd Apatow, with the show featuring the ensemble cast of Stiller, Janeane Garofalo, Andy Dick, and Bob Odenkirk, along with utility player John F. O'Donohue, a former New York City cop with whom Stiller first worked on Back to Brooklyn. 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 canceled.[10][11]
Directorial debut
After a few minor film roles in the early 1990s, such as Stella, Highway to Hell, and a cameo in The Nutt House, Stiller devoted his time to writing, fund raising, recruiting cast members, and directing Reality Bites.[9] The film was produced by Danny DeVito (who later directed Stiller's 2003 film Duplex and produced the 2004 film Along Came Polly). Stiller acted in the film, which was praised by some critics.
He joined his parents in the family film Heavyweights, in which he played two 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 tackling 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, 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 film.[12] 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.[9]
Comedy career
In 1998, Stiller put aside his directing ambitions to star in There's Something About Mary alongside Cameron Diaz, which accelerated Stiller's acting career. That 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.
Stiller in December 2008
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 Greg Focker in Meet the Parents opposite Robert De Niro. 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 (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)[13] while shots of the World Trade Center were digitally removed and hidden for the film's release after the September 11 terrorist attacks.[14]
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 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 in a flashback as the father of the character Arthur (played by Jerry Stiller). He also made a guest appearance on World Wrestling Entertainment's WWE Raw.[15]
In 2004, Stiller appeared in six different films, all of which 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. While Envy only grossed $14.5 million worldwide,[16] his most successful film of the year was Meet the Fockers, which grossed over $516.6 million worldwide.[17] 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 released in 2008.
In a 1999 interview with GQ and later in a 2001 interview with Hollywood.com, Stiller stated that he has bipolar disorder, an illness he said that ran in his family.[11] In interviews in November and December 2006, Stiller claimed that this earlier interview's comment about the disorder was false.[30] In one interview he clarified, "I said jokingly in GQ that I was, like, crazy, and it came out as: Ben Stiller, bipolar manic-depressive!"[31]
Stiller is a self-professed Trekkie, and appeared in a 1977 book on fandom and conventions. He appeared in the TV special Star Trek: 30 Years and Beyond to express his love of the show, and in the comedy roast of William Shatner. He frequently references the show in his work, and named his production company "Red Hour Films" after the original Trek episode "Return of the Archons".
Tenacious D's video "Tribute", in which he merely walks across the shot in the mall during the climax of the song.
P. Diddy's "Bad Boy for Life" video as P. Diddy's neighbor.
Jack Johnson's music video, "Taylor," in which he runs over a chicken. An extended version of the video features Ben as a pedantic director, frequently interrupting and instructing Jack.
Beastie Boys' 2006 in-concert movie Awesome: I Fuckin' Shot That!, when Stiller and his wife appear among the audience members caught on amateur camera footage. Stiller is shown rapping along to three songs, then in a brief vox pops-style interview during the closing credits.
Stiller appears as a supermarket manager in Travis' video of their 2007 single "Closer".[33]
Awards and honors
Stiller was awarded an Emmy Award for "Outstanding Individual Achievement in Writing in a Variety or Music Program"[11] for his work on The Ben Stiller Show
He has been nominated twelve times for the Teen Choice Awards and won once for "Choice Hissy Fit" for his work in Zoolander. He also was nominated by the MTV Movie Awards thirteen times and won three times for "Best Fight" in There's Something About Mary, "Best Comedic Performance" in Meet the Parents, and "Best Villain" in Dodgeball: A True Underdog Story.[34]
Princeton University's Class of 2005 inducted Stiller as an honorary member of the class during its "Senior Week" in April 2005.[35]
On February 23, 2007 Stiller received the Hasty Pudding Man of the Year award from Harvard's Hasty Pudding Theatricals. According to the organization, the award is given to performers who give a lasting and impressive contribution to the world of entertainment.[36]
