Ben Stiller Describes The Time He Cut Daughter Ella Out Of Walter Mitty As His “Worst Decision”
In his new documentary, Stiller & Meara: Nothing Is Lost- about the relationship of his parents, Jerry Stiller, and Anne Meara, Ben Stiller, reflects on the upbringing of his children, his parenting experience, as well as a difficult regret related to his daughter, Ella, with Christine Taylor.
In the movie, he talks about the time he decided to remove her from his film, The Secret Life of Walter Mitty, Ben Stiller said to Entertainment Weekly, “I cut you out of The Secret Life of Walter Mitty. Maybe it is the worst decision that I have ever made in my entire life.”
Ella Has Moved On—But Ben Still Feels It
Now 23 years old, Ella states that she is no longer upset with the decision that went against her in the 2013 movie, where she was briefly seen playing the younger version of Odessa Mitty. She also said she was “really scared” for the shoot and “it didn’t make sense in the film.”
Still, Ben is not at ease. He asks her rhetorically, “For me, it kind of goes deeper beyond just this thing you were cut from. It has something to do with my own troubles regarding my fixation on work, or perfectionism.”
How Ben’s Work Addiction Impacted the Family
Ben and Christine’s 20-year-old son Quinlin explains that he and Ella had front-row seats to their father’s work obsession and were witness to the spill-over effect it had on the household. Quin in the film says, “After a hard day or if something was not going the right way, you find yourself very much in your own head.” He continues, “When you have gone to that place, it is difficult to bring you back out of it. That would somewhat have spoiled the great part about being on vacation.”
Ben Stiller Confronts the Cost of Wearing “All the Hats”
“You’re juggling all these hats, trying to keep them in balance, aren’t you? Directing, acting, producing, writing, and not to mention being a father, right?” Quinlin says in the film. “And sometimes I felt like that was, you know, the last thing that got treated.”
This confession hits Ben hard, who was raised in the middle of “all the stress and tension” between his parents and was committed to going the other way. “The irony is, I thought I was doing the opposite of my parents. I thought I was succeeding,” he admits. “I was doing a lot of running home on weekends, creating special places for the kids to play when they were coming to the set—but if I listened to them, it was the same thing as when I was a kid. I just didn’t realize that.”
Ben Stiller’s Kids Are Following in His Footsteps—And He Can’t Wait to Collaborate
Not at all their father’s obsessive love for acting and filmmaking, Ella and Quinlin decided to continue the family business. Ella was also a guest in the final season of And Just Like That.
At present, Ben is looking forward to a different kind of collaboration with his kids. “Both my kids are actors—and not really kids anymore,” he informed E! News last November. “They’re both really good, so it’d be fun to work with them. I’ve done a couple little things with them, but I’d love to. It’d be really fun.”
With a chuckle, he added, “I think at some point they will be directing and producing things that I will be asking them to cast me in. That’s how it goes.”
