Originally appeared on E! Online
Ben Stiller kept the faith when it came to Christine Taylor.
Despite the “Zoolander” stars’ 2017 separation, the couple — who share children Ella Stiller, 23, and Quinlin Stiller, 20 — found their way back together years later. And Stiller has an idea about the secret to why their relationship is still a success.
“You just have to want to be together and want to make it work,” he exclusively told E! News at the Oct. 5 NYFF63 premiere of his documentary “Stiller & Meara: Nothing is Lost.” “I think that’s the biggest thing.”
The 59-year-old found that to be one of the biggest takeaways as he worked on the documentary about his late parents, comedians Anne Meara and Jerry Stiller — which hits theaters Oct. 17 and Apple TV+ on Oct. 24 — as diving into their marriage gave him new insight into his own.
“It’s just about a commitment to the relationship,” Stiller added, “and valuing the relationship.”
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And the “Keeping the Faith” actor felt especially grateful that it wasn’t a one-sided decision to make the marriage work, as it was something Taylor, 54, also cared about.
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“I feel really lucky that we got to a place where we could — on both sides — value what we had,” Stiller shared, “and want to make it work.”
As he previously shared, he and the “Brady Bunch Movie” alum’s decision to split after 17 years of marriage helped them realize just how important their love story was to them.
“When we separated, it was just having space to see what our relationship was, what my life felt like when we weren’t in that relationship, how much I loved our family unit,” he explained to The New York Times in January. “It was like three or four years that we weren’t together but we always were connected.”
Plus, Stiller wasn’t quite ready to fully separate from Taylor.
“In my mind, I never didn’t want us to be together,” he added. “I don’t know where Christine was, you’d have to ask her, but COVID put us all together in the same house.”
After a year of living together again with their kids, the couple decided to give it another go.
“There’s nothing like that, when you come back,” Stiller gushed, “you have so much more appreciation for what you have, because we know we could not have it.”
—Reporting by Nikaline McCarley
PHOTOSQuinlin Stiller, Christine Taylor, Ella Stiller, Ben Stiller
