Ben Stiller has made the leap from the small screen to feature films look easy. From The Ben Stiller Show, his early 90s MTV sketch series, he fought his way to the top of the Hollywood comedy tree – though the drama Greenberg proved he can tackle serious roles too.
He appears in Night at the Museum: Secret of the Tomb, out in the UK and US this weekend and in Australia on Boxing Day, and in honour of that fact, we’re looking back at some of his finest work. Which Stiller is your favourite? Let us know in the comments below.
Reality Bites
Stiller donned an ill-fitting suit to play seemingly soulless corporate bod Michael Grates in his 1994 directorial debut. Though Winona Ryder as Lelaina Pierce is the real axis around which the storyline pivots, there’s plenty to be said for Stiller’s relentless romantic pursuit of the heroine, and the fizzing tension generated between him and Ethan Hawke as guitarist-slacker Troy Dyer. A perfect role for the supposedly anti-establishment MTV age.
Meet the Parents
When parents-in-law comedy works, it can strike gold – just take the Andrew Bergman-scripted 1979 comedy The In-Laws as an example. In this case, Stiller’s cringeworthy turn as the eternally awkward nurse Gaylord “Greg” Focker continued that legacy, as he flailed from doling out water volleyball injuries to inadvertently turning a pile of a dead woman’s ashes into an impromptu kitty-litter mound. Top-notch discomfort all round.
Flirting with Disaster
Though less famed than his performances in There’s Something About Mary or Zoolander, here Stiller hit a fine balance between his usual bumbling everyman and a slightly more serious, reflective performance. He played Mel Coplin, a new father on the hunt for his biological parents, in David O Russell’s 1996 comedy and held his own alongside Alan Alda and Mary Tyler Moore.
Zoolander
Catchphrases, catchphrases and – you guessed it – more catchphrases have elevated this film from a gleefully silly satire on the fashion industry to a running in-joke. Stiller wrote, directed and starred in the 2001 comedy and we all have him to blame every time someone at an awkwardly quiet office party shouts “blue steel” before posing for a selfie. Damn you, Stiller. Damn you.
The Royal Tenenbaums
Stiller isn’t much of a Wes Anderson regular, but he impresses as Chas Tenenbaum in this story of a dysfunctional family of former child prodigies and their distant father. Chas’s paranoia about the safety of his children in the wake of his wife’s death in a plane crash imbued the film with dark humour, and Stiller hit the tone just right.
