Ben Stiller got his woman back.
In a new interview with The New York Times, the actor opened up about his separation from wife Christine Taylor, and how their time apart had a positive impact on their marriage.
"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," he said. "It was like three or four years that we weren’t together but we always were connected. In my mind, I never didn’t want us to be together."
He added, "I don’t know where Christine was, you’d have to ask her, but COVID put us all together in the same house.”
He shared that they lived together for almost a year before reconciling.
"But I’m so grateful for it, and I think not that many people do come back together when they separate," Stiller said. "There’s nothing like that, when you come back. You have so much more appreciation for what you have, because we know we could not have it."
The actors met on the set of the 1999 TV pilot called Heat Vision and Jack, which never aired. They walked down the aisle in 2000 and now share 22-year-old daughter, Ella and 19-year-old son, Quinlin. Stiller and Taylor separated in 2017 before moving back in together during the COVID-19 pandemic.
In March 2023, Taylor appeared on The Drew Barrymore Show and confessed that they "got married very quickly after meeting each other" and eventually "started to grow in different directions,” per People.
That time apart for each of us to sort of get to know who we are—I think we have these growth spurts even as adults," she added. "I feel like we needed some time to figure that out."
