Ben Stiller’s kids call out actor for being absent during childhood

Ben Stiller’s adult children are calling him out for being an absent dad in his new documentary.

In “Stiller & Meara: Nothing Is Lost,” out Friday, the actor spoke to son Quinlin, 20, about a frank conversation he had with daughter Ella, 23, regarding his parenting mistakes, per Us Weekly.

Ella told the “Zoolander” star, “I literally can’t ever remember you being around when I was growing up.”

The comedian asked Quinlin whether Ella’s statement “resonate[d]” with him, to which his son explained that parenting had appeared to come “last” on Stiller’s list of priorities in the past.

“After a tough day, or if something was going wrong, you can kind of get into your own head and when you get into that place, it’s hard to get you out of it,” Quinlin explained. “So that would kind of put a damper on the fun part of being on vacation.

“You have all these hats that you’re trying to balance, you know?” he continued. “Being a director, an actor, a producer, a writer. But also just, like, a father.”

Quinlin concluded, “Sometimes, I felt that [role] would come last to these other things.“

Elsewhere in the documentary, which primarily cover Stiller’s parents’ 61-year marriage, the “Night at the Museum: Secret of the Tomb” star looked back on the time he told Quinlin he wouldn’t be home for months while filming the movie.

At the time, the little one’s face dropped and he replied, “I wish you could stay home.”

Stiller thought he had been “doing so much better than” at raising his children than dad Jerry Stiller — also an actor — but has since realized that wasn’t the case.

“I thought I was pulling it off,” Ben said in the documentary. “I was flying home on weekends and finding special places for the kids to play when they would visit the set. But in reality, 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.”

He told Quinlin, “You always feel like growing up you’re not going to make the mistakes your parents made. And then you make different mistakes, or some of the same mistakes.”

Quinlin, in turn, got real about “frustrated” he feels about Stiller’s fame, citing an incident “a few weeks” prior during which a fan asked for a photo during a dinner when he was “stressed about college stuff.”

Quinlin fumed, “Like, ‘The world just has to stop to get this picture.’”

While recently chatting with The Sunday Times about the vulnerable project, Stiller confessed, “I probably f–ked up more with my kids than my parents did with us.”

The filmmaker and his wife, Christine Taylor, became parents when Ella arrived in 2002, welcoming Quinlin three years later.

The couple have been married since 2000 but did briefly separate in 2017 only to reconnect during their COVID-19 quarantine.

Earlier this year, Stiller noted on “The View” that he no longer takes his partner’s love “for granted” post-reconciliation.

“You know it could go away,” the “Meet the Fockers” star explained of his mindset in January.

“Stiller & Meara: Nothing Is Lost” begins streaming on Apple TV Oct. 24.