How Ben Stiller and Wife Christine Taylor Got a Second Chance at Love After 5-Year Separation

Ben Stiller is in a happy place, professionally and privately. Severance, the Emmy-winning series he executive produces, is back for a second season on Apple TV+. He and his wife, actress Christine Taylor, have also rekindled their marriage after several years apart. “I’m so grateful for it,” Ben, 59, says. “I think not that many people do come back together when they separate. 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.”

Ben and Christine, 53, met in 1999 when she auditioned for a TV series Ben was directing that wasn’t picked up. “We were both on the rebound [from other relationships],” he recalls. “We went on a date and it clicked.” Things moved fast — perhaps too fast. “We knew each other six months, got engaged, were married within a year, then had [daughter Ella] the next year,” says Christine, who also worked with her husband on the films Zoolander, Dodgeball: A True Underdog Story, Tropic Thunder and Zoolander 2. “My marriage wasn’t in a great place,” Ben admits of filming that last 2016 comedy. “There was a lot going on.”

Ben Stiller and Christine Taylor Saved Their Marriage

In May 2017, the couple announced their separation after 17 years of marriage. “We always stayed a family unit,” says Christine, who invited Ben to move in with her and the children when COVID hit. “It was almost a year of living in the same house before we were actually together,” says Ben, who explains that the pandemic gave them time together to work out their differences. “We always were connected,” he says. “In my mind, I never didn’t want us to be together.”