The Evolution of Ben Stiller
BEN STILLER‘S LOS ANGELES apartment is striking for a number of reasons (the penthouse deck with a view of the Wilshire Country Club springs to mind), but what stands out most is why he feels at home there. “What I really like,” says Stiller as he shows you around, “is that it feels like a New York apartment.”
He’s right. Much like Stiller himself, the home seems slightly out of place in the high glare of Hollywood, more subdued, the kind of space as likely to have the curtains drawn as it is to have the sun pouring in.
Stiller points out the hardwood floors, the Twenties-style kitchen, the original moldings. In the large main room of the duplex’s bottom floor, there is a collection of black-and-white photographs, nothing else – like a SoHo gallery space.
As he gives the tour, Stiller is warm; yet, for someone who has made his mark in comedy, he does not strike you as the casual sort. He is unfailingly polite; he is friendly; but there is also a quiet intensity and a nervousness that seeps into the air around him. You like him. You just wouldn’t call him to entertain at a child’s birthday party.
“I’ve never really felt like a funny, funny guy,” says Stiller as we make our way to the deck. “I’ve never really felt like Mr. Life of the Party. People who know me know that I’m not the most gregarious person. I’m trying to open myself up more. I’ve realized in the last few years that my state of mind affects how I live my life.”
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Stiller’s mind these days must be in a dizzy state – a career high induced by the sheer goofiness and phenomenal success of There’s Something About Mary. Stiller has always been one of the most versatile talents of his generation: an Emmy-winning writer (for The Ben Stiller Show); a director of major stars in major motion pictures (Winona Ryder in Reality Bites, Jim Carrey in The Cable Guy); and a steadily employed actor drawn to small, intriguing comedies such as Flirting With Disaster, Zero Effect and the controversial Your Friends and Neighbors. But rarely have the heavens been better aligned for a performer than they are now for Stiller. First comes There’s Something About Mary, the summer comedy that won’t quit even deep into the fall and the kind of colossal hit that every star needs. At the same time, Stiller nails a performance as a junkie TV writer in Permanent Midnight that most serious actors wait a lifetime to deliver. After a career spent working diligently, Stiller has finally hit the big time by shooting dope, donning braces and getting his penis caught in his zipper.
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But then, the map of Stiller’s world has always been drawn with blurry borders between reality and pop-culture fantasy. As a child, he was taught to swim, in Las Vegas, by the Pips; he watched home movies of Rodney Danger-field holding him when he was an infant; Stiller even had the Swami Satchidanada borrow his skateboard outside the Stillers’ apartment building, on Riverside Drive in New York. When one of the Beatles’ robed gurus of choice borrows your skateboard, it’s tough to talk about a normal childhood with a straight face.
Stiller’s parents, Jerry Stiller and Anne Meara, are a veteran comedy duo and were thirty-two-time guests on The Ed Sullivan Show. (Today, Dad is best known as Frank Costanza on Seinfeld, and Mom from movies like The Daytrippers.) The pair often traveled for work, leaving Ben and his older sister, Amy, alone. Upset that show business had taken their parents out of town, the two would fill the void with show business. Not surprisingly, both are now actors. From the moment Ben began to look at the world around him, he has been building his body of work.
“Ben and Amy did a lot of films together,” says Anne Meara. “They would do show tunes and do our act. We weren’t there a lot, and I think that was painful for them.”
“But we didn’t want to go to L.A.,” says Jerry. “We thought a bigger danger was growing up in a community where the neighbors were all stars and the kids were in competition with their parents’ roles.”
The irony is that while his parents agonized over whether to live in New York or Los Angeles, Stiller was learning to exist in the entertainment industry. Today, at thirty-two, Stiller lives comfortably in all three.
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