Why Is This Man Not Laughing?

6:00 AM PDT 10/25/2011 by Stephen Galloway

Behind Ben Stiller's comic persona is an astute, driven filmmaker who cites Martin Scorsese and Robert De Niro as his idols, fights for aid to Haiti and struggles to find balance in the midst of his empire-building: "It's very easy not to stop and feel things."

Spend time with Ben Stiller, and his seriousness is striking. The actor who played the moronic model of 2001's Zoolander; the neurotic nerd of Meet the Parents and its sequels; the hapless suitor who famously gets his private parts trapped in his fly in the picture that propelled him to stardom, 1998's There's Something About Mary, is in real life unnervingly different.