Ben Stiller Admits He Cut His Own Daughter From 2013 Film:

Ben Stiller is being brutally honest about his own flaws in a new documentary he produced about his parents, the late Jerry Stiller and Anne Meara.

In the upcoming documentary, “Stiller & Meara: Nothing Is Lost,” the “Severance” director talks to his daughter, Ella, 23, about a project they worked on when she was young and why it led to one of his deepest mistakes.

“I cut you out of ‘The Secret Life of Walter Mitty,'” Ben Stiller says in a conversation with Ella Stiller, referencing a 2013 film he directed and starred in.

“It’s probably the worst decision I’ve ever made in my life,” the actor admitted via Entertainment Weekly.

Ella Stiller was much more forgiving than her father, telling him that her scene “made no sense in the movie.”

But Ben Stiller said the mistake embodies a larger flaw he sees in himself.

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“For me, it’s something deeper. Which relates to my own issues with my own obsession with my work, or ‘perfectionism,'” Ben Stiller said.

He became even more candid in an interview with The Sunday Times, in which the actor said he “probably screwed up my kids more than my parents screwed up with us.”

He added: “My son tells me that being a father might not have been at the top of my list.”

“Like any parent, I look back on things that weren’t happy about my childhood and say, ‘I’ll do better,’” he told the outlet. “And then I realized that it was impossible to avoid making the mistakes that they made. I feel like I have a really great relationship with my kids, but it’s complicated and at times it’s been strained.”

“When they were young, I didn’t understand it. I thought, ‘Oh, the kids are little, I can work and be a good father to make money for the family,'” he said. “But the bonds that are formed with children when they are young are very important.”