Ben Stiller Opens Up About Struggles During Separation from Christine Taylor and Pressure to Match His Parents’ Lasting Marriage

The ‘Sev­er­ance’ direc­tor reflects on his 2017 sep­a­ra­tion in his new doc­u­men­tary ‘Stiller & Meara: Noth­ing Is Lost’

Ben Stiller and Chris­tine Tay­lor are open­ing up about their 2017 sep­a­ra­tion. 

In his new doc­u­men­tary, Stiller & Meara: Noth­ing Is Lost, Stiller, 59, looks back at his par­ents Jer­ry Stiller and Anne Meara’s rela­tion­ship — both on and off the stage. In doing so, he draws com­par­isons between their six decades of mar­riage and his rela­tion­ship with Tay­lor, 54, whom he mar­ried in 2000. 

Just like his own par­ents, Ben and Tay­lor worked togeth­er ear­ly in their rela­tion­ship, meet­ing for the first time while film­ing a TV pilot called Heat Vision and Jack. After tying the knot in 2000, the two starred as love inter­ests in 2001’s Zoolan­der and appeared togeth­er again in 2004’s Dodge­ball.

Ben and Amy Stiller with their par­ents Jer­ry Stiller and Anne Meara.

Jer­ry and Meara also worked close­ly togeth­er with their com­e­dy act Stiller & Meara tak­ing them to stages around the coun­try, includ­ing 36 appear­ances on The Ed Sul­li­van Show. Look­ing back on his par­ents’ careers — which for many years were inter­twined — Ben won­ders, “what kind of toll that took on their actu­al rela­tion­ship?”

When Ben and Taylor’s rela­tion­ship first began, he remem­bers think­ing “I don’t want to become my par­ents.”

“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 says to her hus­band in the 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.” 

In May 2017, after near­ly two decades of mar­riage, Ben and Tay­lor announced their sep­a­ra­tion, telling PEOPLE in a joint state­ment: “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.”

Look­ing back on that time, Ben says the whole ordeal made him feel like a fail­ure

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,” Ben tells Tay­lor in the doc­u­men­tary. 

Fol­low­ing their split, the par­ents of two were seen togeth­er on numer­ous occa­sions, includ­ing the 2019 Emmys where Tay­lor was on deck to sup­port Ben, who was nom­i­nat­ed for out­stand­ing direct­ing for a lim­it­ed series, movie or dra­mat­ic spe­cial for Escape At Dan­nemo­ra.

In 2022, Ben revealed in an inter­view with Esquire that the cou­ple had rekin­dled their roman­tic rela­tion­ship dur­ing the pan­dem­ic while their fam­i­ly of four were all in the same house togeth­er again

He reflects on the deci­sion in the doc­u­men­tary explain­ing, “all of a sud­den we were togeth­er in the house and dur­ing that time I start­ed to make the movie too. So there 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.”

After its Oct. 5, 2025 pre­miere at the New York Film Fes­ti­val, Stiller & Meara: Noth­ing Is Lost will screen in select the­aters begin­ning on Oct. 17 and will be avail­able to stream Apple TV+ on Oct. 24.