Christine Taylor Details 'Impasse' That Led to Ben Stiller Separation

Christine Taylor Dismissed Ben Stiller as a Rebound

While Christine Taylor and Ben Stiller’s love story began over two decades ago, the Dodgeballs stars didn’t always think it would last.

Appearing on the Wednesday, September 17 episode of the “We’re Still Here, Babes” podcast, Taylor, 55, admitted she considered Stiller, 60, to be a “rebound” at first because they had both recently been dating other people.

“We both thought [it] was our sort of rebound romance, ‘cause I had just broken up with someone, and he was just getting out of something,” Taylor said. “We just were having fun, and just having a great time together. We kinda kept it on the down-low, it wasn’t like I was telling — I told my closest friends and family, but not my peripheral group of friends for a while.”

Describing the initial dating period as a “whirlwind romance,” Taylor added, “We took a big leap. And then yeah, then we got married in May of 2000, and then I had our daughter the next year, and then we worked together a bunch. We did Zoolander together, we did Dodgeball together.”

Christine Taylor Details 'Impasse' That Led to Ben Stiller Separation


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A period of personal growth. Christine Taylor opened up about why she and husband Ben Stiller separated — and revealed what led them back to one another. “We got married very quickly after meeting each other,” the Hey Dude alum, 51, explained during a Tuesday, March 7, appearance on The Drew Barrymore Show. “We knew each […]

It hasn’t always been smooth sailing for the couple, however. Although Stiller and Taylor got married in 2000 and welcomed two children (Ella, 24, and Quinlin, 21) during their relationship, they eventually called it quits in 2017. In 2022, the pair confirmed they had reconciled during the Covid pandemic.

“We were separated and got back together and we’re happy about that. It’s been really wonderful for all of us. Unexpected, and one of the things that came out of the pandemic,” Stiller told Esquire in February 2022.

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(Photo by Cindy Ord/Getty Images)

Taylor spoke about her marriage breakdown and the couple’s ultimate reconciliation while appearing on The Drew Barrymore Show in March 2023.

“Family was always a priority, but I think Ben and I both started to grow in different directions,” she explained of their split. “And when we made the decision to separate, it was not something we wanted to talk publicly about or took lightly. We were at this impasse of, ‘Let’s figure this out, what’s best at this chapter in our lives.’ That’s going back three or four years.”

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Christine Taylor candidly discussed how she and husband Ben Stiller reconciled years after their “challenging” 2017 split, crediting the COVID-19 pandemic for helping the pair reconcile. “If there was a silver lining for us during COVID, that was the little gift,” Taylor, 54, said while appearing on the Tuesday, May 26, episode of “The McBride […]

Taylor added that the pandemic’s forced quarantine periods at their uninterrupted time at home gave them unexpected time to work things out.

“We all ended up in our house together with two teenagers and we found this way back,” Taylor said. “We had so much time to talk, there were no other distractions. … It just happened organically.”