Ben Stiller Felt He Was ‘Failing’ During Separation from Wife Christine Taylor, Couldn’t ‘Live Up’ to Parents’ Marriage

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. 

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.