Personal Life
The eldest of four children, Stiller was born in Brooklyn, New York City, the son of Jewish parents, Bella (née Citrin) and William Stiller, a bus driver. He lived in the Williamsburg and East New York neighborhoods before his family moved to the Lower East Side, where he attended Seward Park High School. A drama major at Syracuse University, he gained a Bachelor's degree in Speech and Drama in 1950.
In the 1953 Phoenix Theater production of Coriolanus (produced by John Houseman), Jerry Stiller (along with Gene Saks and Jack Klugman) formed "the best trio of Shakespearian clowns that had ever seen on any stage."
Stiller has two children, who followed in his own footsteps, actor/comedian Ben Stiller and actress Amy Stiller.
Stiller is a member of the National Fraternity Tau Delta Phi.
Read more about this topic: Jerry Stiller
Famous quotes containing the words personal and/or life:
“I have enjoyed greatly the second blooming that comes when you finish the life of the emotions and of personal relations; and suddenly you find—at the age of fifty, say—that a whole new life has opened before you, filled with things you can think about, study, or read about.... It is as if a fresh sap of ideas and thoughts was rising in you.”
—Agatha Christie (1891–1976)
“We only seem to learn from Life that Life doesn’t matter so much as it seemed to do—it’s not so burningly important, after all, what happens. We crawl, like blinking sea-creatures, out of the Ocean onto a spur of rock, we creep over the promontory bewildered and dazzled and hurting ourselves, then we drop in the ocean on the other side: and the little transit doesn’t matter so much.”
—D.H. (David Herbert)