Ben Stiller 'Wasn't Ready to Just Give Up On' Marriage to Christine Taylor During Separation: 'I Love My Family'

Ben Stiller is reflecting on his how his parents' relationship has affected his own marriage to Christine Taylor.

Stiller, 59, told The Hollywood Reporter in an interview published Wednesday, Feb. 5, that he felt he replicated some aspects of his late father Jerry Stiller's behavior toward Ben's late mother Anne Meara in the years after he and Taylor, 53, married in 2000.

“You start making movies, and if they don’t go well, that would affect me,” Ben recalled.

He and Taylor, who share daughter Ella, 22, and son Quinlin, 19, famously separated in 2017 and ultimately reunited as a couple during the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020. “I didn’t expect we were going to get back together,” he told THR. “But when we broke up, there was a part of me that wasn’t ready to just give up on it. Probably a certain amount of that is having watched my parents. And I love Christine, I love my family, and I was not ready to just go, ‘OK, enough of this.’ ”

Ben's parents Jerry and Anne rose to fame in the 1960s as the comedy duo Stiller & Meara. Ben told the outlet that Jerry, who died in 2020 at 92, "was committed to turning their relationship into something that they could make a living doing a comedy act about."

“And my mom didn’t really love that as much, but she was really good at it, and that affected their relationship," he added of Meara, who died at 85 in 2015.

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Ben continues to work frequently, both as an director and producer on Apple TV+'s Severance and in recent movies like Nutcrackers, but he told THR that he looks to find more balance between his work life and family these days.

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“Sometimes I have to be pulled from it," he said. “I also really love hanging out with my family and Christine and having fun together. So I’m happy that I didn’t totally miss the boat on that.”

Related: Ella Stiller to Make Off-Broadway Debut in Before This New Year (Exclusive)

Ben most recently recounted how he and Taylor got back together during a Jan. 16 appearance on The View, in which he said, “I don’t know how it happened other than we both wanted it."

“Now, every day that we’re together, we do not take [it] for granted," he said at the time. "At least, I know I don’t, because you know it could go away and that to me is the gift for our relationship is that we have that every day, and I really am so happy that we’re together.”

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