The 2013 cut Ben Stiller called “the worst decision I ever made” in his career
Ben Stiller has struck gold many times in his career, although he perhaps wouldn’t have found such an easy entry into show business if not for both of his parents, Jerry Stiller and Anne Meara, already being stalwarts of the industry.
It certainly helped that his father was a popular comedian, his easy knack for humour apparently running through his blood, yet it would be unfair to say that Stiller never worked hard to get where he is now, because from a young age, he was making his own parody short films, which eventually led him to be noticed by Saturday Night Live.
So, his nepotistic ties certainly helped, but Stiller had more than enough imagination and quick wit to get him to the top. By 1990, he’d landed his own sketch series, The Ben Stiller Show, which ran for five years. Since then, he has done everything from popular comedies such as There’s Something About Mary and Zoolander, directed movies like Reality Bites, and bagged the ‘Charlie Chaplin Award for Excellence in Comedy’ at the Baftas.
Despite all of his success, he has still made some mistakes (I’m looking at you, Little Fockers), but the one he believes to be his worst is, surprise surprise, something to do with family ties. You see, the filmmaker cast his daughter, Ella Olivia Stiller, in his 2013 movie The Secret Life of Walter Mitty, as the younger version of his character’s sister, Odessa, played by Kathryn Hahn. But when the movie was released (to admittedly pretty mixed reviews), the young Stiller was nowhere to be seen.
In the 2025 documentary, Stiller & Meara: Nothing Is Lost, a film about his parents’ relationship, Stiller is seen talking to his daughter. During one conversation, he reveals what he believes to be his most regrettable career blunder. “I cut you out of The Secret Life of Walter Mitty. It’s probably the worst decision I ever made in my life,” he admits.
His daughter didn’t seem too bothered because she could admit that her scene probably wasn’t all that necessary, anyway. “It didn’t make sense in the movie,” she said, adding that she was “really scared” to perform.
So, while Stiller regrets not allowing his daughter the chance to shine in his film, she has since gone on to secure roles in the likes of Adam Sandler’s Hubie Halloween and the Sex and the City reboot And Just Like That…. Perhaps now that Stiller is out of the perfectionism mode that came with making the film, he can’t help but feel like cutting his own daughter out of a scene was rather ruthless.
But when it comes to making a movie, you can’t always afford to make such special reservations, just because you’re related to the actor. Stiller knew that, so he chopped his ten-year-old out of the movie.
“What it relates to is my own issues with my own obsession with my work, or ‘perfectionism’,” he admits. Clearly, his daughter just wasn’t on his level.
