Along came growth. Ben Stiller shed some light on his yearslong breakup from wife Christine Taylor and what ultimately brought them back together as a couple.
“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,” Stiller explained of their 2017 split in an interview with The New York Times published Jan. 11. “It was like three or four years that we weren’t together but we always were connected.” The Severance director added that, from his perspective, his separation from Taylor-with whom he shares Ella, 22, and Quinlin, 19-was never intended to be permanent. “In my mind, I never didn’t want us to be together,” Stiller-who married his Zoolander costar in 2000-said. “I don’t know where Christine was, you’d have to ask her, but COVID put us all together in the same house.”
The Dodgeball actor pointed to being back under the same roof again starting in 2020 as a turning point in their relationship, which offered the then-estranged couple an opportunity to reconnect. “It was almost a year of living in the same house before we were actually together,” Stiller shared. “But I’m so grateful for it, and I think not that many people do come back together when they separate.”
“There’s nothing like that, when you come back,” he continued. “You have so much more appreciation for what you have, because we know we could not have it.”
Taylor had a similar perspective on their separation when she opened up about it a couple of years ago while reflecting on how quickly they moved at the beginning of their relationship over 20 years ago. “We got married very quickly after meeting each other,” she said on The Drew Barrymore Show in 2023. “We knew each other six months, got engaged, married within the year and had Ella that next year.”