Ben Stiller has recently shared his honest take on “nepo baby” label in Hollywood.
The Zoolander actor, whose parents are the late Jerry Stiller and Anne Meara, notes that the phrase is considered as “a selling point” in the industry.
“I think it’s kinda like that Brat Pack thing, right? says the 59-year-old on SiriusXM’s The Howard Stern Show.
Ben, who pays tribute to his parents in the documentary Stiller & Meara: Nothing Is Lost, explains, “New York Magazine, they coined a phrase, and then it just became a thing.”
However, the Night At The Museum actor points out that it’s “always been what it is, in humanity and life”.
“It’s like, you buy a violin, a Stradivarius or whatever, it’s been in the family for hundreds of years. That’s a selling point,” continues Ben.
Meet the Parents actor further says that there are other arguments related to the term like about “access and all those things”.
But Ben reveals his feeling and mentions, “If it’s in your blood, if it’s your passion and you grew up around it—for me, I think growing up around it, talking about all these things that I saw with my parents, you, actually as a kid, see the dark underside of it, the stress, the effects it has on relationships”.
“You see that up close as a kid, and then you still want to go into it,” adds Happy Gilmore 2 actor.
Elsewhere in the interview, Ben recalls his first job in the 1986 off-Broadway revival of House of Blue Leaves after he got the opportunity for an audition “as a favour” for his mom because he “couldn’t get in cause the casting director didn’t wanna see me”.
Meanwhile, Ben still thinks that he did what he had to get that part.
“But if you have passion, you need to do it. You need to go for it,” he concludes.