COUPLESBen Stiller Explains Reason for Yearslong Separation From Wife Christine Taylor: 'I Never Didn't Want Us to Be Together'
Ben Stiller and Christine Taylor tied the knot in 2000.
Ben Stiller and Christine Taylor proved true love always finds its way back.
The Zoolander actor opened up about his 2017 split from The Brady Brunch Movie actress while discussing how they rekindled their relationship after years apart.
The couple split in 2017 but rekindled their marriage after the COVID-19 pandemic brought them back together in 2020.
"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 shared in an interview with a news outlet published Saturday, January 11. "It was like three or four years that we weren’t together but we always were connected."
The Night at the Museum star went on to admit he never wanted his and Taylor's separation to be forever.
Ben Stiller and Christine Taylor met while filming the 1999 TV pilot 'Heat Vision and Jack,' which never aired.
"In my mind, I never didn’t want us to be together," confessed Stiller, who shares kids Ella, 22, and Quinlin, 19, with Taylor. "I don’t know where Christine was, you’d have to ask her, but COVID put us all together in the same house."
The Tropic Thunder actor credited quarantine in 2020 as the turning point in their then-estranged marriage, as it forced them to be back in the same room and reconnect.
Ben Stiller and Christine Taylor share two kids: Ella, 22, and Quinlin, 19.
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"It was almost a year of living in the same house before we were actually together," Stiller explained. "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 noted. "You have so much more appreciation for what you have, because we know we could not have it."
Taylor previously opened up about her and Stiller's rollercoaster romance while appearing on The Drew Barrymore Show in 2023.
"We got married very quickly after meeting each other," she said on the talk show. "We knew each other six months, got engaged, married within the year and had Ella that next year."
The couple is now happily married.
"I think Ben and I both started to grow in different directions," The Wedding Singer actress reflected. "And when we made the decision to separate, it was not something we wanted to talk publicly about or took lightly."
Taylor mentioned, "during that time apart, [we] got to know who [we] are" and "needed some time to figure that out," but they "always stayed a family unit and always continued to do things together."
After moving back in together during quarantine, Taylor and Stiller had "so much time to talk" with "no other distractions," allowing them to fully sort out their feelings.
The New York Times interviewed Stiller.
