Jerry Stiller

Biography

Jerry Stiller has been a mainstay of American comedy for almost 50 years. "My father and mother," he says, "I figured if I could make them laugh, they'd stop fighting. I stole all of their material."

Stiller played the loud Frank Costanza on Seinfeld, and the loud father-in-law on King of Queens. In 2001, he co-starred with his son Ben Stiller in Zoolander, written by the younger Stiller.

He earned a degree in Speech and Drama, but he wanted to be a comedian because, "During the Great Depression, when people laughed their worries disappeared. Audiences loved these funny men."

Stiller's first performance was in a Chicago production of Showboat, but his biggest success came from performing as "Stiller & Meara" with his Irish bride, Anne Meara. Their schtick? He was the Jewish guy married to an Irish bride. They were hilarious, performing as a team for over 20 years, and appearing on The Ed Sullivan Show more than 30 times. They weren't confined to comedy, either -- they performed in Joseph Papp's "Shakespeare in the Park" in New York city in the 1950s.

Stiller started appearing in films in the 1970s, playing serious and comedic roles from a drunken passenger in Airport 1975 to Divine's husband in Hairspray. Stiller & Meara had a television show of their own in 1986.

His wife, he says, may be his toughest critic: "I used to think I was a comedian and then I started to think I was funny. My wife said, 'You're not very funny. You're better off when you don't try to be funny.' So then I started to be an actor, but I didn't think I was that good of an actor. So who knows?"