Ben Stiller talks about fatherhood and the honest conversations he has had with his children, Ella and Quin.
In his upcoming documentary Stiller & Meara: Nothing is lost, which looks back on his childhood and his parents, comedy legends Jerry Stiller and Anne Meara, the actor also focuses on his own role as a father.
In one scene, his son Quin talked about how his father’s busy schedule often affected family time.
“After a hard day, or when something goes wrong, you can get into your own head a little bit,” Quin said We weekly.
“And when you get to that place, it’s hard to get you out. So that would put a damper on the fun part of being on vacation.”
Quin went on to explain that his father was constantly juggling multiple roles: “being a director, an actor, a producer, a writer,” and sometimes “being a father” would come last among all those responsibilities.
Ella, meanwhile, was even more direct with her father, telling him, “I literally never remember you being there when I was growing up.”
It wasn’t easy for Ben to hear that from his children.
“The irony is that I thought I was doing so much better than my parents,” he said in the documentary.
“I thought I could do it. I flew home on the weekends and found special places for the kids to play when they visited the set. But in reality, just hearing them talk about it, it was the same thing for them as I experienced as a kid and I just couldn’t see it at all at the time.”
The Dodgeball star reflected on this further in an interview with The Sunday timesand admitted, “I probably spent more time with my kids than my parents did with us. My son tells me that maybe being a dad wasn’t at the top of my list.”
He said that while he remembers the unhappy moments of his own childhood, growing older has made him realize how “impossible” it is to avoid repeating some of the same mistakes.
“I feel like I have a really good relationship with my kids,” he explained, “but it’s complicated and sometimes tense. When they were young, I didn’t understand it. I thought, ‘Oh, the kids are still young, I can work and be a good father who makes money for the family.’ But the bond you build with your children when they are young is so important.”
Stiller’s relationship with his children also faced challenges following his 2017 divorce from wife Christine Taylor.
The couple, who later reconciled during the pandemic, had to figure out how the split affected their family.
“I feel bad about what our breakup did to the kids,” he said, “but it might have been the best thing that could have happened to Christine and me.”
He added that the experience changed the way they view their relationship.
“We don’t take it for granted anymore,” Stiller said.
“And if you’re happy, you’ll be a better parent. You have obstacles and you’re trying to figure them out, and if you stay, all you can do is acknowledge the past and try to fix it. That’s what we have in our family. It’s not perfect at all. But that’s just life.”
