Ben Stiller felt disconnected from family after separating from Christine Taylor

Ben Stiller is looking back on his separation from his wife, Christine Taylor.

In his new documentary, “Stiller & Meara: Nothing is Lost,” which premiered at the New York Film Festival on Sunday, the “Severance” director, 59, recalled how the couple broke up in 2017 but reconciled a few years later during the COVID-19 pandemic.

“My career had been going along for a long time but things actually weren’t great in my personal life,” Ben remembered, per People.

“I just felt out of balance and unhappy and kind of disconnected from my family, from my kids and just kind of a little bit lost,” the actor added.

Ben, who shares two children, daughter Ella, 23, and son Quinn, 20, with Taylor, 54, said that his parents Jerry Stiller and Anne Meara’s longtime marriage helped him realize he shouldn’t give up on his wife.

“I started to think about my parents and all the stress and tension I remember seeing as a kid and the pressure when they were working together and how they stayed together through it,” he explained: “I think I wanted to somehow understand how they did it.”

Ben and Taylor announced their separation in May 2017 after nearly two decades of marriage.

“With tremendous love and respect for each other, and the 18 years we spent together as a couple, we have made the decision to separate,” they said in a joint statement at the time. “Our priority will continue to be raising our children as devoted parents and the closest of friends. We kindly ask that the media respect our privacy at this time.”

But the “Dodgeball” co-stars eventually fell back in love while living together with their kids during lockdown.

“All of a sudden we were together in the house and during that time I started to make the movie too,” Ben said in the doc. “So there sort of this coming together. Us talking about what we were going through, our issues, and looking at what my parents had been through too in a way I hadn’t looked at it before.”

During another scene in the documentary, Ben told his wife: “When we separated my feeling was like ‘Oh, I’m failing at this’ and look at my parents they have this incredible 50 plus year marriage and I can’t live up to that.”

Jerry and Meara, who inspired Ben’s new documentary, infamously worked together as a comedic duo during their 50-year marriage. They appeared on “The Ed Sullivan Show” a whopping 36 times.

Meara died at age 85 in May 2015. Jerry passed away five years later at age 92.

“I just wanted to tell the story of their careers and lives and as it evolved I realized it had to have more,” Ben said at the “Stiller & Meara: Nothing is Lost” premiere at the NY Film Festival.

“People would say that’s interesting … but there is something missing in terms of the personal perspective of it. [And] that took a while, because I really didn’t think I wanted to be in the movie at all,” the “Meet the Parents” actor added.

Stiller & Meara: Nothing Is Lost will screen in select theaters beginning on Oct. 17 and then comes out on Apple TV+ on Oct. 24.