It’s great to work with the people who make you laugh and who are funnier than I am.
BEN STILLERWhen I didn’t have a family, I was much more of a workaholic. I still like to work, but I also want to be home with them. As you get older, you realize you need balance. If it’s not fun, what’s the point?
More Ben Stiller Quotes
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It was Mick Jagger’s idea.The other one was Simple Plan, based on a novel by Scott Smith. It’s a great book – really stark, not a comedy – about a guy who finds $4 million in a plane crash and decides to keep it.
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If you look at my eyes when I’m dancing, you’ll see that glazed look.
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A eugoogoolizer…one who speaks at funerals…Or did you think I was too stupid to know what a eugoogooly was?
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I think this whole celebrity world is weird anyway. Weird and funny and kind of pathetic and yet so right for parody.
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People like to define you through what they’ve seen you do. There are aspects of my personality, I guess, that come through on-screen, but I don’t sit around thinking, ‘I’ve been a bumbling suitor all my life.’
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I actually started working on Madagascar before my daughter was born.
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When I was growing up, This is Spinal Tap [1984] was the ultimate comedy, and it was the kind of thing I wanted to do. But you get to a point with parody where you can’t go much further because ultimately it’s feeding off of somebody else’s creativity.
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I’d love to travel more. I really look forward to traveling with my kids. I’m just waiting for them to want to travel with me.
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I was staying on [writer/director/actor] Eric Schaeffer’s couch in New York, and he said, “I’ve got this movie [If Lucy Fell]. Can you do five days on it?”
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I studied Tom Cruise running in all the Mission Impossibles. I think he’s one of the best screen runners.
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I’m just not a naturally cheery person. I’m naturally moody. I know that from people who spend a lot of time with me. People who spend a lot of time with me may not wish to spend a lot more time with me.
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Nobody makes me bleed my own blood – nobody!
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I had two projects that fell apart during preproduction. The first one was this movie that Judd Apatow and I had written about two guys following the Rolling Stones. It was going to be half concert film, half pseudo-documentary.
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I don’t think the public is dying to see me necessarily be funny all the time.
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It’s weird that people expect me to be funny. I find it a real burden when I’m expected to be humorous on talk shows.
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It’s what I wanted to do with my life. Not necessarily just direct Jim Carrey movies, but to direct and act and write and create and along the way discover what it is that I’m about.
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When we were visiting New York City, I took my kids to the same playground where I went growing up. It was fun to feel that connection of having gone there as a kid and being there as a parent.
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I’m pretty sure there’s a lot more to life than being really, really, ridiculously good looking. And I plan on finding out what that is.
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Zoolander was more of my own sensibility.
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As a kid I had dreams about being successful, thinking it would be cool. Then, when I was in my 20s, I really thought I had it much more figured out than I do now.
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I don’t think know if anything’s going to translate anywhere. You’re making a movie, you hope it’s going to be funny, you can’t think about how it’s going to go over.
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I grew up wanting to make movies, and along the way I suddenly found that I had a career doing comedy.
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I don’t know what that weid fantasy is that makes people go, “Oh, you must have had a great childhood.”
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I enjoy the work I do in comedies. It’s a valid test of your creative abilities.
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Maybe forced retirement isn’t necessary after all.
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I don’t think it’s ever easy to be funny. I find it easy to amuse myself with a certain sort of cynical dark humor that tends toward the meaner side, like my character in Happy Gilmore. Those kinds of characters come easily to me.
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