Ben Stiller is opening up about the highs and lows of his marriage to his wife, Christine Taylor, including their separation and reconciliation.
In a new documentary, Stiller & Meara: Nothing Is Lost — which premiered October 5 at the at the New York Film Festival — the Severance director reflects on how his parents’ 61-year marriage affected his own.
Similar to his parents, Jerry Stiller and Anne Meara, Stiller and Taylor met as co-stars while filming a television pilot called Heat Vision and Jack. After getting married in 2000, they continued to play love interests and star in subsequent films together. However, two children and nearly two decades of marriage later, the Zoolander actor, 59, and Taylor announced they were separating in 2017.
“With tremendous love and respect for each other, and the 18 years we spent together as a couple, we have made the decision to separate. Our priority will continue to be raising our children as devoted parents and the closest of friends. We kindly ask that the media respect our privacy at this time,” their joint statement to People read at the time.
“When we separated, my feeling was like ‘Oh, I’m failing at this’ and look at my parents, they have this incredible 50-plus-year marriage and I can’t live up to that,” Stiller said in the documentary, per People.
Taylor, too, opened up in the documentary about the impact of her husband’s parents’ union, noting that Jerry and Anne worked on their comedy act together in the midst of their marriage.
“I do feel like there was history, and I think a lot of it was your experience of what that ultimately meant for a relationship that it could put extra strain when you’re eating, sleeping, breathing each other in that way,” Taylor said in the new documentary.
“I also felt like there was a fear from you for me of what that would look like to the outside world. I mean, it was very loaded.”
Stiller then revealed in a 2022 interview with Esquire that they had reconciled after moving back in together with their children at the start of the Covid-19 pandemic.
“We were separated and got back together, and we’re happy about that. It’s been really wonderful for all of us,” he said at the time. “Unexpected, and one of the things that came out of the pandemic.”
He further reflected on their decision to come back together in Stiller & Meara: Nothing Is Lost.
“All of a sudden, we were together in the house, and during that time, I started to make the movie too,” he continued, referencing the upcoming documentary.
“So there’s sort of this coming together. Us talking about what we were going through, our issues, and looking at what my parents had been through too, in a way I hadn’t looked at it before.”
Stiller & Meara: Nothing Is Lost will premiere in select movie theaters beginning October 17 and will be available to stream October 24 on Apple TV+.
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