Stiller thunders his way to box office success yet again

Ben Stiller's unlikely comedy, Tropic Thunder, opened to $6.5 million (Dh23.87m) on Thursday night, its first day out in the US markets. The film, about a group of actors filming a war movie who get caught in a real-life war, cost a reported $90m to make and is on course to take in $41m in its first five days, which could see it become a late-summer hit. Stiller, 42, sat down to talk movies, directing, Tom Cruise and what he's up to next.


It seems like you've always wanted to be a director. Was that the plan?

Since I was like 10 or 11. That was always my thing. I always enjoyed that aspect of it and I always felt like that's what I'd end up doing when I wasn't acting anymore. I love acting too, but for me directing is a much more fulfilling and creative process because you get to actually see the whole thing through.

What about acting and directing at the same time?

That's not my favourite thing to do, but sometimes it's necessary. And for a film like Tropic Thunder, I think on a certain level it helped get the movie made. I'd have directed this movie even if I wasn't in it, for sure.

But you enjoyed being in it, too?

Oh, yeah, and to get the chance to act with Robert Downey Jr and Jack Black, all of them – I'm very impressed with them. I've known Jack for a long time and it was a great experience, for instance, to be able to work with him in a way where I could just encourage him to do all the stuff that I love about him. That's the great thing about being a director.

Does having been an actor help the directing process?

It helps to have some sensitivity to what it feels like to be in front of the camera and what it takes to sort of allow people to have a comfortable enough situation to do their thing.

One of your characters is an addict. How do you as a director deal with that sensitive issue, when you know Robert Downey Jr had this problems?

With no sensitivity whatsoever, none at all. There's the great thing about him. He has an incredible sense of humour about himself and you have to, too. I think anyone who's in this film has to have a good sense of humour about themselves because we're just making fun of ourselves.

What was the hardest day of the shoot, logistically?

There were some hard days. It rained a lot, almost everyday. So those days were hard, wondering if it's going to stop and there were like six guys in most scenes. That's just a lot of people to film every time. But the hardest was the scene when I say 'Can we cut' at the beginning of the movie. Not the ones with all the action stuff because that was something we had six months of planning on and it was done very much by the book, but when the cameras turn around on the crew and we had to sort of shoot the crew. We're filming the movie within the movie – there were so many people in every scene and my hands were tied behind my back and I'm yelling cut, but they don't know if I'm really yelling cut. It took about a week to shoot and I was very happy to get out of it.

How did you sign on Tom Cruise?

I think he's awesome. I sent him the script and I give him credit for really coming up with that character. He really liked the script and wanted to be a part of it and at one point I was thinking of him playing the agent [the role played by Matthew McConaughey] and then he said, 'Well, it'd really be interesting to be this studio guy.' I hadn't thought about that. And then he wanted to have big hairy hands [and I suggested his character] be bald, too. So we did make-up tests. Then he started dancing in the make-up test, which we were filming. I put some music to it, just for fun, and [realised] he had this natural rhythm. So we went back and wrote a scene for it.

Was it inevitable that you were going to be in show business since you come from a show business family?

I don't know. I just knew that I wanted to do it early on. Maybe that's because I was around it, but I always loved movies. My parents were doing a lot more night clubs and plays and TV – not too many movies. I remember my Dad [comedian Jerry Stiller] was in The Taking of Pelham One, Two, Three. He had a scene in a tollbooth on the Tri-borough Bridge in New York with Walter Matthau. He took me one night and they were shooting this one scene all night. It was in 1974, so I was about nine and I remember thinking it was the coolest thing. The cameras and the lights… I wanted to do this.

What would you say if your children wanted to go into the business?

I don't know. I'm totally open to whatever is going to make them happy. At this point they're so young I'm interested to see where their instincts take them.

Do they ever ooh and ah when they come to see you on the set?

Not really. My daughter is six, she's not that interested in movies. She'd rather be playing with her dolls which is good. I think that's healthy and my son sort of gets it. It's kind of selfish, just to show them why I'm leaving everyday so that I can assuage my own guilt.

What's happening with Night at the Museum II?

I'm in the middle of shooting that right now. It has the subtitle 'Battle at the Smithsonian' since we're at the Smithsonian. I'm filming in Vancouver. [Ricky] Gervais is back. Amy Adams is in it. Christopher Guest is in it. Steve Coogan is back. It's a great cast.



Ben Stiller
Actor, director, producer

Born in 1965 as Benjamin Edward Stiller, the native New Yorker and college dropout carved a career in theatre and directing short films before going mainstream.

It was a spoof of actor Tom Cruise's The Color of Money that got Stiller his own show on Saturday Night Live, which he followed up with an acting part in Steven Speilberg's Empire of The Sun (1989).

Over the next few years, Stiller scraped enough money to direct Reality Bites (1994), and followed it up with The Cable Guy (1996). However, it was his breakthrough comic performance in There's Something About Mary (1998) that made him a star.

Stiller, a married father-of-two, is one of the most popular actors in Hollywood.