This month’s award for Best Lede in a Celebrity Profile (Musical or Comedy) goes to Adam Green for “Fool’s Gold,” his lighthearted portrait of Ben Stiller, who overcame humble beginnings as the child of famous comedians to become a $20 million-a-project star (Men’s Vogue, producer):
On a temperate, late spring afternoon, I am wandering through the Warner Bros. lot in Burbank, California, in search of Mixing Stage 3, where I have an appointment with Ben Stiller, who is putting the finishing touches on his new movie, Tropic Thunder, and I’m thinking, Man, I hope this guy doesn’t turn out to be a ding-dong.
Spoiler Alert: Mr. Stiller is no ding-dong, but rather “amiable and unpretentious,” with a “screen persona [that] has grown nearly as familiar, if not as iconic, as Chaplin’s,” for which “Stiller has no peer.”
