Ben Stiller Quotations

There's always an element of fear that you need to work a lot until people get sick and tired of you or finally figure out that you're a fraud after all!

I have a lot of nervous energy. Work is my best way of channelling that into something productive unless I want to wind up assaulting the postman or gardener.

Sometimes I wondered whether I hadn't let my career get confined to one direction, but lately I've decided to accept the fact that I have this opportunity to be successful doing comedies.

My parents used to throw great New Year's Eve parties. They invited such an eclectic mix of showbiz people. All those cool people were always hanging out at our apartment.

It was a mixed blessing to have famous parents. It was tough to go to auditions and be bad, since I couldn't be anonymous.

I've had a very good career and I'm grateful that the public has had some level of acceptance and appreciation of my work.

I think most politicians could take a dodgeball in the face.

I don't devalue comedy as compared to drama. Not one bit.

I'm always willing to endure humiliation on behalf of my characters.

I love New York. I was sad, depressed and incredibly moved by our fellow countrymen and what they've done. I wanted to give people a chance to see something funny, have a distraction.

I don't have a burning desire to be taken seriously as an actor. I don't have a master plan in that way.

I think people will be curious to see what I can do as a dramatic actor.

Very quickly after meeting Dustin, the whole image I had of him was shattered.

You're freaked out that you're going to be having a child, and once you're looking after your daughter, it's the most beautiful thing in the world.

The cliches are that it's the most generic Starsky and Hutch plot you can find.

I'm not an expert on the Malaysian sense of humor.

The failure of The Cable Guy impacted my career. I had to start writing and acting again.

I don't think the public is dying to see me necessarily be funny all the time.

I grew up wanting to make movies, and along the way I suddenly found that I had a career doing comedy.

Jim Carrey, a comic genius, has a harder time overcoming the public's desire for him to be funny simply because he's so good at it.

There's an old saying in Hollywood: It's not the length of your film, it's how you use it.

Whatever talent I had, I'm sure it helped that my parents were in the business and that I grew up around actors, comedians and directors.

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.

Paul is Starsky, and I met him before shooting. He was very kind and encouraged us to go with what we wanted to do. It was very sweet to see them back with the car after 25 years.

I enjoy the work I do in comedies. It's a valid test of your creative abilities.

Even when I'm not directing, that doesn't stop Owen from having ideas for what I should be doing.

I would like to do more dramas when I find a good role that will allow me to politely upset people's expectations of me as a comic actor.

If you look at my eyes when I'm dancing, you'll see that glazed look.

I just watched Paul Michael Glaser. He was the reason I wanted to do the movie because as a kid I was such a big fan of his. I watched all the episodes and tried to get a feeling for what he was doing.

It's great to work with the people who make you laugh and who are funnier than I am.

I think you never want to have to go into the scene having to improvise; you want to make sure its working on the page. But I do like to have the ability to try stuff just in the moment, to give it some sort of spontaneity.

I don't play hockey at all. I'm not comfortable on skates.

I love history. I'm very interested by it and I think it's great to have a movie that brings it alive in a way. It's sort of that romanticized version of it.

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.

I've been to Japan but I've never been to China, I'd love to go to China. I don't know, I like to go to places that are remote. So, I think I'd like to do that more. And just sort of also explore not having a structured work life someday, to have more free time to sort of see what happens.

I'm Jewish, but my mom's Catholic, so the guilt area is covered. I have the highest expectations, along with the lowest. I tried to put as much of myself as possible in Reality Bites, but in terms of my humor, I'm still trying to figure out what my sensibility is. It's a process, really. I don't feel like I have a very clear idea of what I'm supposed to be, or even of how people perceive me, except that I got put into this Generation X file.

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. 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.

I don't even want to think of myself as an actor because it's such an insecure place to go.

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.

All those rumors about her being underweight are trash. She's [Calista Flockhart] gorgeous.

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.

My own parents were touchy-feely.

When you're doing a comedy and you want to somehow satirise people who are taking themselves seriously, I think the most serious genre is the thing you're going to get the most out of. If you're trying to satirise a comedy, it's hard to do that - it doesn't really work as well. But I love the war movie genre and I'm a fan of all those movies that are part of what this movie is.

I was a bad student. I liked archaeology actually, I was interested in maybe becoming an archaeologist but I was such a bad student and had such bad grades that I wasn't going to get into any really good college so I fell back on acting.

Words can only hurt you if you try to read them. Don't play their game!

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.

Success doesn't necessarily mean happiness.

The big-name stars . . . are always going to be playing what they've played before if they want to remain so-called A-list stars. That's why someone like Johnny Depp is doing more interesting roles not caring about the size of the movie.

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.

Nobody makes me bleed my own blood. Nobody!

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.

What the hell am I doing with my life?

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.

I wanted to be funny for people who didn't care about fashion at all, to just to kind of exist as a silly character.

Zoolander was more of my own sensibility.

God was showing off when he made you.

Oh, dear God, thank you, you are such a good God to us. A kind and gentle and accommodating God, and we thank You oh sweet, sweet Lord of hosts for the smörgåsbord You have so aptly laid at our table this day, and each day, by day, day by day, by day oh dear Lord three things we pray to love Thee more dearly, to see Thee more clearly, to follow Thee more nearly, day, by day, by day. Amen.

There's a sense here in L.A. that everybody's aware of everybody all the time. It's funny but we choose it. People who are here want to be here, including me.

I know that I'm better as an actor when I'm working with a good actor. I think anytime you're working with a better actor, it makes you a better actor.

Oh, you can milk just about anything with nipples.

Moisture is the essence of wetness, and wetness is the essence of beauty.

I don't know what that weid fantasy is that makes people go, "Oh, you must have had a great childhood."

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.

I have not been an easygoing guy. I think it's called bipolar manic depression. I've got a rich history of that in my family.

I recently watched that Lucie Arnaz-produced documentary [Lucy and Desi: A Home Movie, 1992] about her parents [Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz], and I saw so much of my own childhood there.

I'm very interested in the early American history, the time when the country came together.

I don't need a compass to tell me which way the wind shines !

Maybe forced retirement isn't necessary after all.

First of all, the first cut of the movie was like three and a half hours and I walked away going, 'Wow, I know there's like twenty minutes that I can cut -' when I first saw it 'But I don't know after that.' The first time I put up then in front of people I was like, 'Oh, my God, I can take that out and that out and that out.'

When 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?

Well, this movie I've been working on for a while. I had the idea for the movie like twenty years ago when I was doing 'Empire of the Sun' in 1987 because at that time that's when all these Vietnam movies were being made and my friends and I were going on auditions for these Vietnam movies and my friends were getting them and going away to fake boot camps.

I studied Tom Cruise running in all the Mission Impossibles. I think he's one of the best screen runners.

When you have kids you want to be able to go to movies and take the family too, and actually all enjoy it together. I don't think there are that many great, live action family movies that everybody can enjoy.

I think this whole celebrity world is weird anyway. Weird and funny and kind of pathetic and yet so right for parody.

I actually started working on Madagascar before my daughter was born.

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.

You have to stay in character in between takes.

Stiller was able to reach speeds of around 35 miles per hour, no small task for someone who had never longboarded before.

A eugoogoolizer...one who speaks at funerals...Or did you think I was too stupid to know what a eugoogooly was?

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.

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?" And I was like, "Yeah, anything. Twenty-four hours times five is 120 hours. Oh, great, I'll fill 120 hours of my life with something." So I did that and it was fun, and then I did Flirting with Disaster.

It's important that we came here, just to touch base here in this great country... When I was about 16 I came with my dad for a couple of weeks and had a great time and I've wanted to come back, it's been way too long. So, I'm very happy to be here and I want to come back longer with the rest of my family.

Fashion is so over the top.

When you come out with a film, hopefully it gets presented to the public in the right way so people aren't getting something they don't expect.

Having a child changes everything in a most positive way, and I am extremely lucky to have a great wife who is also an incredible mom.

Owen is one of the funniest people around. He's a friend of mine, and we've worked together a number of times. There's no other person like Owen.

We did the movie because we liked the script; everybody wanted to do the movie just to have fun, and that was the most rewarding part of the process.

Finding a woman to share your life is not an easy thing in the first place, and then to find yourself happy is even more pleasantly surprising.

I have not gone to an 'N Sync concert personally. But my dad did a part in Lance Bass' new movie. He could not be a nicer young man.

If I find a little orphan child in a war zone, how do I help him? ... Make this movie. Make people think. Change attitudes.