Ben Stiller Once Saw an Article Urging Hollywood to ‘Stop Putting Ben Stiller in Comedies,’ Left ‘SNL’ After Four Episodes Because ‘I Got Too Nervous’
variety.comZack Sharf Digital News Director Ben Stiller was the latest guest on The New York Times’ “The Interview” podcast and admitted that he still doesn’t understand why he became such a popular comedy movie star in the late 1990s and 2000s.
His self-directed work in 1996’s “The Cable Guy” was followed by the one-two punch of 1999’s “There’s Something About Mary” and 2000’s “Meet the Parents,” both of which grossed more than $330 million at the worldwide box office and turned Stiller into a blockbuster actor. “I remember opening up the L.A.
Times and there was this writer who wrote a letter: ‘Dear God, stop putting Ben Stiller in comedies,'” Stiller said about this period of his career. “I was just like, I don’t know, I’m here, I love doing what I do.
But it’s only in retrospect that I can go, wow, there was a thing happening that I was fortunate to be a part of. But I don’t know what the zeitgeist was.
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