Ben Stiller

Benjamin Edward Meara Stiller is an American actor, comedian, and filmmaker born on November 30, 1965, in New York City. Raised on the Upper West Side of Manhattan by his parents, comedians Jerry Stiller and Anne Meara, he grew up around the entertainment industry. Stiller developed an early interest in filmmaking, creating Super 8 movies as a child. He made his acting debut at age nine on his mother's show *Kate McShane*, performed with NYC's First All Children's Theater, and played drums for the post-punk band Capital Punishment. After graduating from the Calhoun School in 1983, he briefly studied film at the University of California, Los Angeles, before returning to New York to pursue acting.

Stiller's early professional career included a role in the 1986 Broadway revival of *The House of Blue Leaves*. After producing a satirical short parodying *The Color of Money*, he secured a brief writing and performing stint on *Saturday Night Live* in 1989. He then created, produced, and hosted the sketch comedy series *The Ben Stiller Show*, which aired on MTV in 1990 and Fox in 1992, winning a Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Writing for a Variety Series.

Stiller made his feature film directorial debut with *Reality Bites* (1994). He achieved widespread stardom in the late 1990s and 2000s, becoming associated with a group of comedic actors known as the Frat Pack. He starred in major comedy hits, including *There's Something About Mary* (1998), *Along Came Polly* (2004), *Dodgeball: A True Underdog Story* (2004), *Starsky & Hutch* (2004), and *Tower Heist* (2011). He also anchored several high-grossing film franchises, such as the *Meet the Parents* series, the animated *Madagascar* films, and the *Night at the Museum* trilogy.

Alongside his commercial comedies, Stiller appeared in dramatic films such as *Flirting with Disaster* (1996), *The Royal Tenenbaums* (2001), *Greenberg* (2010), *While We're Young* (2014), and *The Meyerowitz Stories* (2017). As a director, he helmed and starred in *The Cable Guy* (1996), *Zoolander* (2001), *Tropic Thunder* (2008), *The Secret Life of Walter Mitty* (2013), and *Zoolander 2* (2016).

Since the mid-2010s, Stiller has focused heavily on television directing and producing. He directed the 2018 limited series *Escape at Dannemora*, for which he won a Directors Guild of America Award. Since 2022, he has served as a director and executive producer for the Apple TV series *Severance*. His work has earned an Emmy Award, a Directors Guild of America Award, a Britannia Award, and a Teen Choice Award.