Ben Stiller is pulling back the curtain on his years-long separation from his wife, Christine Taylor.
After Ben’s dad, Jerry Stiller, died in 2020, the actor started to consider the possibility of making a film about his famous parents. While his career at the time was doing well, Ben, 59, couldn’t say the same about his personal life.
“My career had been going along for a long time but things actually weren’t great in my personal life,” Ben recalled in the documentary Stiller & Meara: Nothing is Lost, which premiered at the New York Film Festival on Sunday, October 5, per People. “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.”
He continued, “I started to think about my parents and all the stress and tension I remember seeing as a kid and the pressure when they were working together and how they stayed together through it. … I think I wanted to somehow understand how they did it.”
Ben and Taylor were together for 17 years before announcing their separation 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,” the pair told Us Weekly via a joint statement at the time. “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.”
The pair — who share Ella, 23, and Quinn, 20 — revealed in 2022 that they got back together.
“Then, over the course of time, [our relationship] evolved,” he told Esquire in an interview published in 2022, explaining that he moved back in with Taylor and their kids during 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. Unexpected, and one of the things that came out of the pandemic.”
Since their rekindling, Ben has given glimpses of his relationship dynamic with Taylor. In January, Ben recalled that his marriage was not “in a great place” after moving from California back to New York after the release of Zoolander 2.
“There was a lot going on,” Ben told The New York Times. “When we separated, it was just having space to see what our relationship was, what my life felt like when we weren’t in that relationship, how much I loved our family unit.”
He continued, “It was like three or four years that we weren’t together but we always were connected. In my mind, I never didn’t want us to be together. I don’t know where Christine was, you’d have to ask her, but Covid put us all together in the same house.”
When the reporter called the timing “an act of God,” Ben agreed with the sentiment.
“It was almost a year of living in the same house before we were actually together,” Ben explained. “But I’m so grateful for it, and I think not that many people do come back together when they separate. There’s nothing like that, when you come back. You have so much more appreciation for what you have, because we know we could not have it.”
Stiller & Meara: Nothing Is Lost screens in select theaters beginning on October 17 and is available to stream on Apple TV+ October 24.
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