• December 25, 2000
• Vol. 54
• No. 27

Ben Stiller

A Movie Hero Specializing in Humiliation Makes Off with the Year's Top Comedy

Robert De Niro's biggest-grossing film was not Taxi Driver or Raging Bull or The Godfather: Part II. It is this fall's slight comedy Meet the Parents, which so far has taken in more than $150 million and is still playing in theaters. Fans aren't lining up for De Niro, though. They're coming to see Ben Stiller knock over an urn containing cremated ashes, freak out at a flight attendant and explain how "you can milk anything with nipples." As hapless male nurse Greg Focker, Stiller surpassed superstars Julia Roberts (Erin Brockovich) and Mel Gibson (The Patriot) at the box office. With Parents, the 35-year-old actor—who previously showed his flair for supreme mortification in 1998's There's Something About Mary—sealed his deal as what Newsday calls Hollywood's "Boy Blunder."

"Ben," says Parents director Jay Roach, "has a great balance of full-on physical sex appeal and a sense of disaster." But the son of comedians Jerry Stiller and Anne Meara is not content to go through life as a klutz. "It gets boring for everybody if you're out there playing the same character, and the last thing I want to do is get bored," he says. A creative triple threat, he currently is directing Zoolander, a parody of the modeling world that he also wrote and stars in. The film costars his 29-year-old bride, Christine Taylor (The Brady Bunch Movie), whom he wed in May after a whirlwind courtship. "Ben can play the regular guy who gets himself into embarrassing situations, but that's not who he is," she says. "He's a very intelligent, confident guy." As he was last fall when he went to her hometown of Allen-town, Pa., to meet her parents.