Ben Stiller — Movies, TV Shows & Roles

Producer · Actor · Director · Writer

1965-11-30 · New York City, New York, USA · Male

89 series in the catalog

Benjamin Edward Meara Stiller (born November 30, 1965) is an American actor, comedian, and filmmaker. Known for his blend of slapstick humor and sharp wit, Stiller rose to fame in the late 1990s with a group of comedic actors colloquially known as the Frat Pack. His films have grossed more than $2.6 billion in Canada and the United States. His accolades include an Emmy Award, a Directors Guild of America Award, a Britannia Award and a Teen Choice Award.
Stiller is the son of the comedians and actors Jerry Stiller and Anne Meara. He began his career writing mockumentaries and was offered a variety sketch series, The Ben Stiller Show, which he produced and hosted for its 13-episode run. The series ran on MTV in 1990, and on Fox in 1992 and 1993, earning him a Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Writing for a Variety Series.
Stiller gained stardom with leading roles in several successful comedy films, including There's Something About Mary (1998), Zoolander (2001), Along Came Polly (2004), Dodgeball: A True Underdog Story (2004), Starsky & Hutch (2004), Tropic Thunder (2008), and Tower Heist (2011). He also led franchises such as the Meet the Parents films (2000–present), the Madagascar franchise (2005–2012), and the Night at the Museum films (2006–2014). His dramatic films include Flirting with Disaster (1996), The Royal Tenenbaums (2001), and the Noah Baumbach films Greenberg (2010), While We're Young (2014), and The Meyerowitz Stories (2017).
As a director, Stiller made his feature debut with Reality Bites (1994) and has since directed and starred in the films The Cable Guy (1996), Tropic Thunder, The Secret Life of Walter Mitty (2013), and Zoolander 2 (2016). Since the mid-2010s, Stiller has primarily worked as a television director and showrunner. In 2018, he directed the Showtime limited series Escape at Dannemora, earning a Directors Guild of America Award and two Primetime Emmy Award nominations for Outstanding Limited Series and Outstanding Directing for a Limited Series. Since 2022, he has directed and executive produced the Apple TV series Severance, earning four Primetime Emmy Award nominations.
Early life and education
Benjamin Edward Meara Stiller was born on November 30, 1965, in New York City and raised on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. His father, comedian and actor Jerry Stiller, was born to Ashkenazi Jewish parents that had emigrated from Galicia in Poland. His mother, actress and comedian Anne Meara, who was from an Irish Catholic background, converted to Reform Judaism after marrying his father. While they "were never a very religious family", they celebrated both Hanukkah and Christmas, and Stiller had a bar mitzvah.
His parents frequently took him on the sets of their appearances, including The Mike Douglas Show when he was 6. He considered his childhood unusual, stating: "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, Amy, has appeared in many of his productions, including Reality Bites, Dodgeball: A True Underdog Story, and Zoolander. Stiller displayed an early interest in filmmaking and made Super 8 movies with his sister and friends.
At age 9, Stiller made his acting debut as a guest on his mother's short-lived television series, Kate McShane. In the late 1970s, he performed with the New York City troupe NYC's First All Children's Theater, playing 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. During his high school years, he was also the drummer of the post-punk band Capital Punishment, which released the studio album Roadkill in 1982. The band's bassist, Peter Swann, went on to become a judge on the Arizona Court of Appeals, serving from 2008 until 2022. The band reunited in 2018 to release a new EP, titled This is Capital Punishment, for Record Store Day. The current status of the band is unknown.
Stiller attended The Cathedral School of St. John the Divine 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.
Early work
When he was approximately 15, Stiller obtained a small part with one line on the television soap opera Guiding Light, although in an interview he characterized his performance as poor. He was later cast in a role in the 1986 Broadway revival of John Guare's The House of Blue Leaves, alongside John Mahoney; the production would garner four Tony Awards.
During its run, Stiller produced a satirical mockumentary whose principal was fellow actor Mahoney. Stiller's comedic work was well received by the cast and crew of the play, and he followed up with a 10-minute short titled 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 Stiller a spot as a writer. In the meantime, he had a bit role in Steven Spielberg's Empire of the Sun.
In 1989, Stiller wrote for and appeared on Saturday Night Live as a featured performer. However, since the show did not want him to make more short films, he left after four episodes. 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 the short film Going Back to Brooklyn for MTV; it was a music video starring comedian Colin Quinn that parodied LL Cool J's recent hit "Going Back to Cali".
The Ben Stiller Show
Producers at MTV were so impressed with Back to Brooklyn that they offered Stiller a 13-episode show in the experimental "vid-com" format. Titled The Ben Stiller Show, this 1990 series mixed comedy sketches with music videos and parodied various television shows, music stars, and films. It starred Stiller, along with main writer Kahn and Harry O'Reilly, with his parents and sister making occasional appearances.
Although the show was canceled after its first season, it led to another show (also titled The Ben Stiller Show), on the Fox Network in 1992. The series 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. 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 an Emmy Award for Outstanding Writing in a Variety or Music Program after its cancellation.
Directorial debut
In the early 1990s, Stiller had minor roles in films such as Stella and Highway to Hell as well as a cameo in The Nutt House. In 1992, Stiller was approached to direct Reality Bites, based on a script by Helen Childress. Stiller devoted the next year and a half to rewriting the script with Childress, fundraising, and recruiting cast members for the film. It was eventually released in early 1994, directed by Stiller and featuring him as a co-star. The film was produced by Danny DeVito, who would later direct Stiller's 2003 film Duplex and produce his 2004 film…