Ben Stiller is opening up about fatherhood and the honest conversations he’s had with his two children, Ella and Quinn.
In his upcoming documentary Stiller and Mira: Nothing is lost, Reflecting on his childhood and his parents, comedy legends Jerry Stiller and Anne Meara, the actor also shifts focus to his role as a father.
In one scene, his son Quinn shared how his father’s busy schedule affected family time.
“After a hard day, or if something goes wrong, you can kind of think about it,” Quinn said, according to what the British newspaper “Daily Mail” reported. Us Weekly.
“And when you get into that place, it’s hard to get out of it. That can get in the way of the fun part of vacationing.”
Quinn went on to explain that his father was constantly juggling multiple roles, “being a director, an actor, a producer, a writer,” and that, at times, being a father “came last” among all those responsibilities.
Meanwhile, Ella was more direct with her father, telling him: “Literally, I can’t remember you being around when I was growing up.”
Hearing that from his children wasn’t easy for Ben.
“The irony is that I thought I was much better than my father,” he said in the documentary.
“I thought I was going to make it work. I would travel home on the weekends and find special places for the kids to play when they visited the set. But actually, just hearing them talk about it, for them, it was the same thing I had when I was a kid, and I couldn’t see that at all at the time.”
the Dodgeball The star reflects more on this in an interview with Sunday Timesadmitting: “I probably did more with my kids than my father did with us. My son told me that being a father probably wasn’t at the top of my list.”
He said that while he remembers the unhappy moments of his childhood, becoming a father made him realize how “impossible” it was to avoid repeating some of the same mistakes.
He explained: “I feel like I have a really great relationship with my kids, but the relationship is complicated and it was strained at times. When they were little, I didn’t understand it. I thought: ‘Oh, the kids are young, I can work away and be a good father who earns a living for the family.'” But the bonds you form with your children when they’re young are very important.
Stiller’s relationship with his children also faced challenges after his separation from his wife, Christine Taylor, in 2017.
The couple, who later reconciled during the pandemic, had to work out how the split would affect their family.
“I feel bad about what our breakup did to the kids, but it was probably the best thing that ever happened to me and Kristen,” he said.
He added that the experience changed the way they viewed their relationship.
“We no longer take it for granted,” Stiller said.
“And if you’re happy, you’ll be a better parent. You have obstacles and try 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.”