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• Born November 30, 1965 · New York City, New York, USA
• Birth name Benjamin Edward Meara Stiller

QUOTES:

• Show business is great, but when you’re in a movie that made more than $120 million, the perspective changes. I’d never had the experience of being in a movie that so many people found funny. After the enormous success of There’s Something About Mary (1998), I was able to command much more money and I got recognized more. But the reason for all this is only because the movie made money, not because I’m any more talented or better looking.
• Every actor is out there trying to get parts, auditioning, going to acting class and creating a network of people who are in the same position you are. I couldn’t sit around and wait to get work, because it wasn’t happening. I would just try to create my own projects with friends who were filmmakers.
• I think most actors have incredibly big egos, but they’re also incredibly insecure. That’s a bad combination. I include myself in this group. For whatever psychological reasons, we want and need approval from everybody in the universe, though we also think we’re totally unworthy of it. We need to validate ourselves through our work.
• (On his most memorable pre-acting job) For a summer I was a busboy and waiter at a place in New York called Cafe Central, which was a hip, trendy restaurant in 1985. First I bused tables and was really bad at it. I’m clumsy at carrying plates and glasses. You had to have a swiftness and a facility for carrying stacked objects. That wasn’t me. I was interested in who was coming in, because it was an actor hangout. I would want to see who was talking to whom and what they were saying – basically, stuff you shouldn’t do as a person of service. Dudley Moore came into the restaurant and I was really interested in what he was saying. I kept going over to make sure that he and his companion had enough coffee and that their plates were cleared. I think I really annoyed him. I kept changing the ashtrays with that move where you put the clean ashtray over the full ashtray and remove both and put back the clean ashtray. I think I did that one time too many. Then I became a waiter there, and dealing with orders and the kitchen was worse. It prompted me to get acting work.