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How did Ben Stiller know that wife Christine Taylor was the one? The realization “just came to me,” he said.
It happened “very early on” in his relationship with his Zoolander costar, Stiller, 59, recalled in an interview with The Wall Street Journal. “I was like, ‘Oh, I’m really happy being with this person and we have fun together.’ It just felt like an instinctual sort of thing.”
The Severance creator and Taylor, 54, met in 1999 and married less than a year later. “Our shared sense of humor is the key to our off-screen relationship,” he shared. “When you’re with somebody for many years, and you go through the ups and downs of life, a sense of humor is just the most important thing, being able to laugh together and want to hang out together.”
Reflecting on also starring with his wife in the Zoolander movies, Dodgeball: A True Underdog Story and Tropic Thunder, Stiller said, “When we work on screen together, it’s the same thing: she really makes me laugh.”
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The two actors welcomed two children, Ella Olivia and Quinlin Dempsey, in 2002 and 2005, respectively. They made headlines for announcing their separation in May 2017, then reuniting in February 2022.
“I’m so grateful for it, and I think not that many people do come back together when they separate,” Stiller told The New York Times in January. “There’s nothing like that, when you come back. You have so much more appreciation for what you have, because we know we could not have it.”
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Elsewhere in his job interview-like conversation with WSJ, Stiller discussed writing Apple TV+ hit Severance, working with Ariana Grande in their upcoming comedy Focker-in-Law and SZA in one of her music videos and his “brief tenure” of four episodes as a cast member on Saturday Night Live.
In addition to Focker-in-Law, Stiller has comedy The Dink and Severance season three among his upcoming projects.
He directed the documentary Stiller & Meara: Nothing Is Lost, which follows the lives of his late parents Jerry Stiller and Anne Meara. The film is in select theaters now and debuts on Apple TV+ on Friday.
