Ben Stiller felt "out of balance" when he separated from his wife

Jerry's death prompted Ben to come up with an idea to make a documentary about the comedian and his mom Anne Meara in order to "understand" how they coped with maintaining their marriage amid "stress and tension" from working together.

The Night at the Museum star's documentary, Stiller + Meara: Nothing is Lost, premiered at the New York Film Festival over the weekend and according to People magazine, Ben said in the film: "My career had been going along for a long time but things actually weren't great in my personal life.

"I just felt out of balance and unhappy and kind of disconnected from my family, from my kids and just kind of a little bit lost.

"I started to think about my parents and all the stress and tension I remember seeing as a kid and the pressure when they were working together and how they stayed together through it...

"I think I wanted to somehow understand how they did it."

Ben previously insisted he always felt "connected" to Christine during their separation and there was "never" a point where he didn't want them to be together.

Speaking to The New York Times, he said: "When we separated, it was just having space to see what our relationship was, what my life felt like when we weren't in that relationship, how much I loved our family unit.

"It was like three or four years that we weren't together but we always were connected. In my mind, I never didn't want us to be together.

"I don't know where Christine was, you'd have to ask her, but Covid put us all together in the same house."

The couple - who got married in 2000 - moved back in together during the early days of the pandemic in 2020, but it took time for them to get back together.

He recalled: "It was almost a year of living in the same house before we were actually together.

"But I'm so grateful for it, and I think not that many people do come back together when they separate.

"There's nothing like that, when you come back. You have so much more appreciation for what you have, because we know we could not have it."