Ben Stiller says cutting daughter out of film was ‘worst decision’ of his life

Ben Stiller makes mistakes like the rest of us — but there’s one he counts as “probably the worst decision I ever made in my life.”

That grave decision? Cutting his daughter, Ella Olivia Stiller, out of his 2013 adventure comedy-drama film, The Secret Life of Walter Mitty.

The filmmaker shares insight into his grievous blunder in his new documentary, Stiller & Meara: Nothing Is Lost, in which Ben takes viewers behind the scenes of his parents’ relationship. As the Severance director looks back on the trials and tribulations in the marriage between legendary comedians Jerry Stiller and Anne Meara and how it affected him and his sister, Amy Stiller, he reflects on how their tumultuous union shaped him as a father.

While contemplating how — much like his dad — his “obsession” with perfectionism has affected his relationship with his children he shares with wife Christine Taylor, Ben admits to Ella that he knows he’s made many a mistake.

The 23-year-old budding actress laughs, recalling the most heinous of them all — her father cutting out her feature film debut.

“I cut you out of Secret Life of Walter Mitty. It’s probably the worst decision I ever made in my life,” Ben acknowledges, grimacing.

Despite having her young dreams crushed, Ella cheerfully recalls being “really scared” during her brief scene before she concedes that “it didn’t make sense in the movie.”

The scene in question was a brief appearance as young Odessa Mitty, the younger sister of the film’s titular character played by her father.

Although Ella seems well past the slight — and has since moved on to bigger, more iconic onscreen appearances — Ben admits that the decision came from more than a simple director’s cut. “For me it kind of goes deeper. What it relates to is my own issues with my own obsession with my work, or ‘perfectionism,'” he tells his daughter.

When Ben asks his son Quin if his sister’s experience resonates with him, the 20-year-old expands on how the Severance director’s drive could push his family away sometimes.

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

Quin continues, “You have all these hats that you’re trying to balance, you know? 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.”

Ben shares that the sting of admission is that he’d often witness “all the stress and tension” between his parents who worked closely together in their comedy duo, Stiller & Meara, and didn’t want to “end up” like them.

“The irony is, I thought I was doing so much better than my parents. I thought I was pulling it off,” he admits in the documentary. “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.”

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Stiller & Meara: Nothing Is Lost made its premiere on Oct. 5 at the New York Film Festival, and will screen in select theaters beginning on Oct. 17. The documentary will be available to stream on Apple TV+ on Oct. 24.