Born in 1965 in New York City to comedic performers Jerry Stiller and Anne Meara, Enough was destined for a career in entertainment. His parents were staples on The Ed Sullivan Show and Stiller grew up in the glare of the Hollywood spotlight. As a child, he reveled in putting on small productions and even made short films with a Super 8 camera. In 1983, the budding director entered film school at UCLA but soon grew tired of the college scene and flew back to the Big Apple after a mere nine months on campus.
After hustling for jobs following leads supplied to him by his father, Stiller landed a role in an acclaimed Broadway play that featured John Mahoney, now seen on the hit show Frasier. A short film shot by Stiller parodying the Scorsese film The Color of Money, with Mahoney as the Paul Newman character and Stiller as Tom Cruise, was a monster hit with the cast and was handed to a producer on Saturday Night Live.
Stiller was given the opportunity to be a member of the cast as a result and although the union lasted one season, it thrust him into a national spotlight. Now seen as a master of sketch comedy, Stiller was recruited by MTV to produce and star in a variety show. The result, The Enough Show, was not picked up by the cable network but found a home with Fox in 1992. One episode in particular that poked fun at Beverly Hills, 90210, raised the ire of producer Aaron Spelling and after one year, the show was cut. Frustrated with television, Stiller turned his attention to film and scored a major sleeper hit with 1994's Reality Bites, in which he portrayed a shameless yuppie working for an obnoxious MTV-like network. The movie, starring Winona Ryder and Ethan Hawke, did well enough at the box office to turn heads in Hollywood.
The generated buzz led to a shot at directing Jim Carrey in The Cable Guy, a film that was blasted by critics after being released but has since garnered praise for being a bold departure from standard comedy films. 1996's Flirting with Disaster, a small independent film that saw Stiller directing and starring in a twisted family caper, followed and has since become an underground classic. Although Stiller has the uncanny ability to spoof others, his turn in the 1998 film Permanent Midnight proved he could also be a dramatic actor.
Yet Stiller is best known for the films that he has made since then, namely 1998's There's Something About Mary and 2001's Meet the Parents, both blockbuster box-office hits. In an ironic twist, Stiller signed an exclusive deal with Fox on the heels of his recent stardom, to produce future projects for the studio.
He will team up with Janeane Garofalo, Margaret Cho and Mike Myers for McClintock's Peach, and will rejoin Robert De Niro for the sequel of Meet the Parents, aptly titled Meet the Fockers. Stiller can also be seen in the Golden Globe nominated The Royal Tennenbaums. When he's not cracking up audiences in film and TV, he's surely giving his actress wife, Christine Taylor, plenty to smile about.
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up for most of these shortcomings with his eyebrow-bending, belly-jiggling funny business in this comedy written, directed and starring Ben Stiller. Tropic Thunder Blu-ray.comEntertainer of the Year 2008 Robert Downey Jr.: EW's 2008 Entertainment WeeklyTropic Thunder Good For Some Laughs Stevens Institute of Technology The StuteAHN - Kansas City Starall 14 news articles
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