Happy 53rd birthday, Ben Stiller, on November 30, 2018! The successful comic actor is the son of comedy royalty — the legendary comedy team of Jerry Stiller and Anne Meara, who regularly took young Ben to their sets, and he soaked up an earful about comic timing. Realizing early on that stand-up was not for him, he forged his own path. In 1986, he appeared on Broadway in the Tony Award-winning revival of John Guare‘s “The House of Blue Leaves.” Stiller then segued over to “Saturday Night Live” where he was hired as a writer and eventually a performer. He left after four episodes.

In its early days of the network, Fox hired Stiller to create a comedy sketch show that became “The Ben Stiller Show” which, despite a short run, managed to win his team an Emmy for Outstanding Comedy Writing. Then it was on to the movies, with Stiller creating such...