Ben Stiller Learned This 'Good Lesson' About His Kids While Making a Film About His Famous Parents Eric AnderssonOctober 7, 2025 at 3:46 AM 0 Dimitrios Kambouris/Getty; Jim Spellman/WireImage Ben Stiller's documentary Stiller & Meara: Nothing Is Lost, about his parents Jerry Stiller and Anne Meara, ...
- - Ben Stiller Learned This 'Good Lesson' About His Kids While Making a Film About His Famous Parents
Eric AnderssonOctober 7, 2025 at 3:46 AM
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Dimitrios Kambouris/Getty; Jim Spellman/WireImage
Ben Stiller's documentary Stiller & Meara: Nothing Is Lost, about his parents Jerry Stiller and Anne Meara, premiered at the New York Film Festival on Sunday, Oct. 5
Ben's two kids, Ella, 23, and Quin, 20, and his wife Christine Taylor, 54, all participated in the documentary
In a Q&A following the film's debut, Ben said he learned a "good lesson" regarding his children
For Ben Stiller, making a documentary about his parents helped him understand his children in a new way.
During a Q&A following the Oct. 5 New York Film Festival premiere of his new film Stiller & Meara: Nothing Is Lost — about the relationship between his dad Jerry Stiller and mom Anne Meara — Ben, 59, shared what he learned about his kids Ella, 23, and Quinlin, 20, who participated in the movie.
The film dives into all aspects of his parents' relationship — including how his performer father sometimes focused on work at the expense of his family, something Ben realized he also did at times after he became a dad of two with wife Christine Taylor, 54.
In conversation with his sister Amy, 64, and New York Film Festival artistic director Dennis Lim on stage at New York City's Alice Tully Hall, Ben said a "great thing" about the process of including his kids in on-camera interviews was to "hear their feedback."
Roy Rochlin/Getty
Ben Stiller and daughter Ella Stiller in 2024.
At one point in the documentary, Quinlin points out to his dad "all these hats that you're trying to balance," including "being a director, an actor, you know, a producer, a writer, but also, just like a father, right? And sometimes I felt that that would come, you know, last to these other things."
Ben said during the Q&A that "as a filmmaker, I'm like, 'Oh this is a good moment for the movie,' you know, as a person I'm like, 'That sucks.'"
"It was a good lesson to learn, like how much I might think I understand how they're perceiving something, they're actually perceiving it a lot more, which we all do as kids around our parents," he continued.
In the documentary, Ben admitted, "The irony is, I thought I was doing so much better than my parents. I thought I was pulling it off. I was flying home on the weekends and having special places for the kids to play when they come visit the set, but in reality, and just hearing them talk about it for them, it was the same thing I was going through as a kid, and I just couldn't see that at all at the time."
The Q&A also had a more lighthearted moment when Lim asked Ben what his kids think of the film. "Quin, what do you think?" Ben said from the stage, addressing his son in the audience.
"Terrible!" Quinlin joked, before clarifying. "No, I loved it!"
Ben began working on the movie shortly after his father died in 2020 at age 92. His mother died five years prior at age 85.
Amy Sussman/Getty
Anne Meara and Jerry Stiller in 2009.
The film dives into the actors' dynamic on camera — in the 1960s, they were a comedy team known as Stiller and Meara before each carving out separate Hollywood careers — and off.
During the course of making the movie, which features audio recordings of his parents' conversations and home movie footage, the Meet the Parents actor realized that he, too, would need to be a part of it in order to tell the whole story.
"It became clear that it would feel weird or disingenuous to open up these private moments that my parents had and, as a filmmaker, not be looking at my own stuff, and including that in some way, because it felt like I would be judging them," Stiller recently told Time.
"I think the deeper that you go into learning about your parents, and not about them as parents but just as people, always gives you a different perspective on your own life. I really do feel like the experience of delving in gave me more empathy for them," he continued.
Stiller & Meara: Nothing is Lost plays in select theaters on Friday, Oct. 17 before streaming on Apple TV + on Friday, Oct. 24.
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