Ben Stiller reveals the ‘worst decision’ of his life as he admits he ‘f—ked up’ raising his two kids

Ben Stiller admitted cutting his daughter out of one of his movies was the “worst decision” he ever made as a parent.

The “Zoolander” star shared that he’s still haunted by omitting his now 23-year-old daughter, Ella Olivia Stiller, out of his 2013 film “The Secret Life of Walter Mitty” in his new documentary about his parents, Jerry Stiller and Anne Meara, titled “Stiller & Meara: Nothing Is Lost.”

While reflecting on how he inherited his father’s fixation with perfectionism, Ben told Ella, “It’s probably the worst decision I ever made in my life,” per Entertainment Weekly.

Ben’s daughter, who he shares with wife Christine Taylor, was able to laugh off the cut, explaining she was “really scared” to make her on-camera movie debut as a young Odessa Mitty, the sibling of the movie’s frontman, Walter Mitty, portrayed by Ben, 59.

The actress admitted her brief scene “didn’t make sense in the movie.”

“For me, it kind of goes deeper,” Ben, who directed the film, chimed in. “What it relates to is my own issues with my own obsession with my work, or ‘perfectionism.’”

The “Tropic Thunder” star then asked his 20-year-old son, Quinlin Dempsey Stiller, if he could relate to Ella’s experience.

“You have all these hats that you’re trying to balance, you know?” Quinlin explained. “Being a director, an actor, you know, a producer, a writer, but also, just, like, a father, right? And sometimes I felt that that would come, you know, last to these other things.”

“I think, there’s things, you know, after a tough day or something was going wrong, you can get very much in your own head,” he added elsewhere.

“And I think, once you kind of go into that place … [it’s] hard to get you out of it. So that would, kind of, put a damper on the fun part about being on vacation,” Quinlin said.

Ben claimed that growing up and seeing “all the stress and tension” of his famous parents working with each other as comedians had influenced who he is.

Sharing how he once pledged not to be like them, he said, “The irony is, I thought I was doing so much better than my parents. I thought I was pulling it off.

“I was flying home on the weekends and having special places for the kids to play when they come visit the set, but in reality, and just hearing them talk about it for them, it was the same thing I was going through as a kid, and I just couldn’t see that at all at the time.”

During an interview with the Times published Saturday, the director further admitted, “But, then, I probably f–ked up more with my kids than my parents did with us.”

Jerry, who died in 2020, and Meara, who died in 2015, married in 1954 and also shared a now 64-year-old daughter, Amy.

Ben and Taylor, 54, meanwhile, tied the knot in 2000 and have been together since, despite separating in 2017 for about four years.