Ben Stiller is owning up to past mistakes and reflecting on his regrets. The Severance director has been getting introspective about his legacy, specifically that of his family's, through his new documentary Stiller & Meara: Nothing Is Lost, which revisits the life and relationship of his parents, famed comedians Jerry Stiller and Anne Meara. His children with wife Christine Taylor, Ella, 23, and Quinlin, 20, also feature in the documentary, along with a scene where the Zoolander actor apologizes to his daughter over what he claims is "the worst decision I ever made in my life."
Addressing how not unlike his dad, his "obsession" with perfectionism impacted his relationship with his family, Ben confessed that cutting his daughter out of his 2013 film The Secret Life of Walter Mitty, which he starred in and directed, is "probably the worst decision I ever made in my life."
Ella, who the following year had an uncredited appearance in Ben's Night at the Museum: Secret of the Tomb, and most recently appeared on Sex and the City sequel series And Just Like That…, herself confessed that she was "really scared" during her brief scene and further admitted that "it didn't make sense in the movie" anyways. She had filmed a scene as a young Odessa Mitty, the younger sister of her dad's titular character.
Ben, giving insight into his decision making as a director, and having cut that scene, shared: "For me it kind of goes deeper. What it relates to is my own issues with my own obsession with my work, or 'perfectionism,'" before asking his son Quinlin his own take on his dad's perfectionism.
"I think, there's things, you know, after a tough day or something was going wrong, you can get very much in your own head. And I think, once you kind of go into that place... [it's] hard to get you out of it," Quinlin shared, noting that "that kind of, put a damper on the fun part about being on vacation."
"You have all these hats that you're trying to balance, you know? Being a director, an actor, you know, a producer, a writer, but also, just, like, a father, right? And sometimes I felt that that would come, you know, last to these other things," he confessed.
Much of the documentary has to do with Jerry and Anne's tumultuous relationship, both their romantic and working one. "The irony is, I thought I was doing so much better than my parents. I thought I was pulling it off," Ben further shared. "I was flying home on the weekends and having special places for the kids to play when they come visit the set, but in reality, and just hearing them talk about it for them, it was the same thing I was going through as a kid, and I just couldn't see that at all at the time."
Ben and his wife Christine, who he married in 2000, separated in 2018, before ultimately reuniting in 2022 after spending much of the pandemic together. He also addresses the separation in the documentary, admitting how "disconnected" from his family he had become. "My career had been going along for a long time but things actually weren't great in my personal life," he said, adding: "I just felt out of balance and unhappy and kind of disconnected from my family, from my kids and just kind of a little bit lost."