Ben Stiller considers being a ‘Nebo Baby’ a ‘selling point’

Although New York Magazine After the term “nepo baby” became popular in 2022, Ben Stiller has long been aware of criticism regarding his famous parents.

The Emmy Award winner pays tribute to his parents in the documentary Stiller and Meara: Nothing is lostHe explained that he understands the “accessibility” arguments, but considers his upbringing in the industry a “selling point.”

“I think it’s a bit like the Brat Pack, isn’t it? New York Magazinethey are coin a phrase“And then it just became a thing,” he said on SiriusXM’s The Howard Stern Show.

“But it’s always been the way it is, in humanity and life. It’s like if you buy a violin or a Stradivarius or something, it’s been in the family for hundreds of years. That’s a selling point.”

“But I also understand that there are other arguments to be made about access and all these things,” Stiller continued. “My feeling is… if it’s in your blood, if it’s your passion and you’ve grown up around it — for me, I think as I’ve grown up around it, and I talked about all these things that I saw with my father, you, actually as a kid, see the dark underside of it, and the pressure, and the effects it has on relationships. You see that up close as a kid, and then “You still want to dig deeper into it.”

the to cut The EP, whose parents were the late Jerry Stiller and Anne Meara, noted that he got his first job in the 1986 Off-Broadway revival of House of Blue Leaves after getting an audition “as a favor” to his mother because he “couldn’t get in because the casting director didn’t want to see me.”

“But I felt, when I was auditioning, that I had done what I needed to do to get the role,” Stiller explained. “If you have the passion, you have to do it. You have to go for it.”