Starsky & Hutch’s Ben Stiller: Crazy after all these years

Most actors spend years angling for a place inside the showbiz bubble, Ben Stiller got famous by sticking pins in it. Whether it’s skewering pop culture in movies like Zoolander and his new big-screen send-up of Starsky & Hutch or by championing his own super-geek image in Meet the Parents, Stiller’s apparent purpose in life is to remind people – especially people in Hollywood – not to take things so seriously.

The actor’s celebrity spoofs get nearly as much play as his movie roles. He mocked Tom Cruise in a hilarious skit for the 2000 MTV Movie Awards, by suiting up as the actor’s clingy stunt double, Tom Crooze. A year later, at the Video Music Awards, Stiller goofed on P. Diddy’s name changes.

He’s not just being funny. Stiller, 38, has little tolerance for America’s 24/7 obsession with celebrity. He believes too much significance is given to the ordinary things stars say and do, which makes interviewing him about as much fun as the fishhook in the mouth he got in There’s Something About Mary.

He keeps an eye on the clock during the conversation and bristles when questions stray from his next film project. "I’m not leading a life people should care about," Stiller insists. "It’s not like I’ve made a sex tape or anything. Not that I think anybody would want to watch a Ben Stiller sex tape."

It doesn’t take a psychology degree to see why Stiller, who’s made more than 30 movies but is still something of a Hollywood underdog, sounds so jaded. Growing up in a showbiz family (his parents are comedians Jerry Stiller and Anne Meara), Ben couldn’t escape fame. Francis Ford Coppola would drop by the family’s Manhattan apartment on New Year’s Eve; Rodney Dangerfield and Andy Kaufman were Thanksgiving guests. Things were just as surreal away from home. His dad recalls: "Once, when Anne and I were playing Vegas, we stayed at a motel with Gladys Knight. We came back from work and Ben was in the pool with the Pips."

Stiller opted to begin acting after high school rather than earn a degree (he attended UCLA briefly), something he regrets. Instead, he became a student of entertainment. "Ben has this very nerd pop-culture-encyclopedic recall," says Janeane Garofalo, a friend who co-starred on The Ben Stiller Show, an early-’90s sketch series. "Ben can recite every line from Star Trek and a hundred movies. We always said Ben was so determined to be a part of the industry that he became it."

Stiller continues to be a pop junkie, despite his protests that "the mania over finding out things about people like Michael Jackson and J.Lo has never been worse."

"Ben’s not a down-the-middle comedy guy," says Starsky & Hutch co-star Vince Vaughn. "He has excellent taste. Even in a film like Mary, he finds the high road within that, and you go, ‘Wow – this guy makes interesting choices.’"

That includes his latest project. Starsky & Hutch is a disco-era buddy-cop comedy that reunites uptight David Starsky (Stiller) and roguish Ken Hutchinson (Owen Wilson), the grooviest detectives ever to drive a Ford Gran Torino. In the movie version of the hit TV series (1975 to 1979), we learn how the duo met and watch them hunt down a drug kingpin (Vaughn).

"The thing that makes Ben so funny is his sincerity," says frequent collaborator Will Ferrell. "[Audiences] feel like they know him and want to be friends with him." Adds Garofalo: "John Q. Public looks at Ben Stiller and says, ‘He’s the class nerd; he’s like me’ – even though Ben’s nothing like them."

Starsky director Todd Phillips says: "Ben has a very East Coast approach. Things don’t sit and simmer with him. He lets you know right up front what he’s thinking. He’ll fire off e-mails at 2 in the morning if he’s unhappy with a scene."

Part of it comes down to Stiller’s issues with fame. Making Starsky reminded him there was a time when celebrity culture was different. "It was way more simple [in the ’70s]," he says. "A few actors would break out and become huge. Now there are so many stars, so many channels, so much stuff – everybody’s famous."

Opening soon across the Philippines, Starsky & Hutch is distributed by Buena Vista International through Columbia Pictures.