Ben Stiller Gets Candid About The 'Worst Decision' Of His Life

Ben Stiller is reflecting on his past mistakes, including the move he called the "worst decision" of his life.

The actor and director, son of late actors Jerry Stiller and Anne Meara, is exploring the way his parents' careers impacted his upbringing as well as the affect his father's perfectionism had on his own career in the film industry in his new documentary Stiller & Meara: Nothing Is Lost, per People.

Stiller explained how that desire for perfection ultimately led to one of the "worst" mistakes he has made when he didn't include his daughter Ella, now 23, in his 2013 film The Secret Life of Walter Mitty. Ella would have played his character's younger sister.

"I cut you out of Secret Life of Walter Mitty. It's probably the worst decision I ever made in my life," he said.

When Ella acknowledged that the scene "didn't really make sense in the movie," her father said his decision went "deeper" and was related more to "my own issues with my own obsessions with my work, or perfectionism."

Stiller's 20-year-old son Quinlin then shared how his dad's drive has impacted their family in the past, admitting that he felt the Zoolander star's role as a father "would come last" to his work as an actor and filmmaker.

"I think there's things, you know, after a tough day or something was going wrong, you can get very much in your own head," he explained. "And I think, once you kind of go into that place... [it's] hard to get you out of it. So that would, kind of, put a damper on the fun part about being on vacation."

Stiller revealed that he though he was doing a better job balancing work and family life than his parents did when he was a child, so he was surprised to discover how his own children felt growing up, Page Six reports.

"I was flying home on the weekends and having special places for the kids to play when they come visit the set," he said, "but in reality, and just hearing them talk about it for them, it was the same thing I was going through as a kid, and I just couldn't see that at all at the time."

Stiller shares Ella and Quinlin with wife Christine Taylor, whom he married in 2000.