"I wanted somebody else to direct it, but I couldn't find anybody who would be as into it as I was," says Stiller of this comedy, based on a character he and his friend Drake Sather first created for the 1996 VH1 Fashion Awards. The "self-involved yet naive" Derek Zoolander (Stiller) is a male supermodel who is thrown into a midlife crisis when he's eclipsed by his rival, Hansel (Wilson). Soon, Zoolander gets brainwashed by a powerful fashion designer (Ferrell) into assassinating the prime minister of Malaysia, who wants to raise the minimum wage and, therefore, clothing production costs. Stiller says he modeled his character after "some weird kind of hybrid Jason Priestley-Luke Perry guy" he played in a parody on his short-lived series, The Ben Stiller Show. "I just ripped that off and tried to talk like Marilyn Monroe as a guy," he says. "And it turned out funny." All in all, Zoolander has "a ridiculous plot," Stiller adds, "but in a strange way, it kind of works."

Who's the Fairest of Them All? "He wasn't really acting like a male model around the house," says Stiller's wife, Christine Taylor, who plays a jaded style reporter in the film. "Derek Zoolander makes this sort of puckered-lip kind of face, and I did tease Ben later, when I would catch him looking in the mirror, that I might have seen a little of Zoolander there."