Early life
Stein was born to Herbert Stein, a prominent economist who served as chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers under Presidents Nixon and Ford, and his wife Mildred Fishman.1 He grew up in Silver Spring, Maryland, attending Montgomery Blair High School, where his classmates included journalist Carl Bernstein and actress Goldie Hawn; actor Sylvester Stallone also attended the school, though briefly, before moving to Philadelphia.14
He earned a Bachelor of Arts in economics, with honours, from Columbia University in 1966, studying under economist C. Lowell Harriss.1 He then attended Yale Law School, where he studied finance under Jan Deutsch and Henry Wallich and was elected class valedictorian by his fellow students, receiving his Juris Doctor in 1970.1
Career
Law and government
After graduating from Yale, Stein worked as a poverty lawyer in New Haven and Washington, D.C., then as a trial attorney for the Federal Trade Commission. He subsequently served as a speechwriter and counsel for Presidents Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford in the early-to-mid 1970s.1 He later taught law and political science at American University, the University of California at Santa Cruz, and Pepperdine University Law School, where he remained a faculty member from 1990 to 1997.1
Acting
Stein's entertainment career began with a small but instantly iconic appearance as the droning economics teacher in John Hughes's Ferris Bueller's Day Off (1986).2 His deadpan roll-call, "Bueller? Bueller? Bueller?", became one of the most quoted scenes in American screen comedy and established his trademark persona. He appeared the following year in Hughes's Planes, Trains and Automobiles (1987) as a Wichita airport representative2 and had a recurring presence on the ABC coming-of-age series The Wonder Years (1988-1993).2 He played the psychiatrist Dr. Arthur Neuman in The Mask (1994) and reprised that role in Son of the Mask (2005).2 His television credits run to more than fifty productions and include guest appearances on Seinfeld and Family Guy, among many others.
Game show hosting
In 1997, Comedy Central launched Win Ben Stein's Money, a general-knowledge game show in which contestants competed to win money drawn from Stein's own prize pool by outscoring him on questions. Stein co-hosted the series with Jimmy Kimmel. The show ran for six seasons until 2003, earning six Daytime Emmy Awards, including the Outstanding Game Show Host award shared by Stein and Kimmel in 1999.3 The show is widely credited as a key stepping stone in Kimmel's path to late-night television.
Stein began writing film and television criticism for The Wall Street Journal in 1974, and over subsequent decades his byline appeared in the New York Times, The American Spectator, Newsmax, and other publications. He has authored more than two dozen books on finance, personal investment, and conservative commentary. He hosts the podcast The World According to Ben Stein, which continued through 2025 and into 2026. In May 2026, Stein appeared onstage at the TCM Classic Film Festival for a 40th-anniversary screening of Ferris Bueller's Day Off alongside co-star Alan Ruck.5
Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed
In 2008, Stein co-wrote and starred in Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed, a documentary arguing that the scientific establishment unfairly marginalises researchers who question evolutionary theory.6 The film drew sharp criticism from scientists and historians; the Anti-Defamation League issued a public statement on April 29, 2008, criticising its use of Holocaust imagery to draw a link between Darwinism and Nazi ideology.7 It received an 11 percent approval score on Rotten Tomatoes.8
Ghostbusters
In Ghostbusters II (1989), Stein appeared in a cameo role as a Public Works Official.2 His scene involves confirming to city officials that the mysterious slime shell surrounding the Manhattan Museum of Art cannot be breached by conventional equipment.
Stein's likeness was later incorporated into IDW Publishing's Ghostbusters comic series. In Ghostbusters Volume 1, issue 9, one of the two spectral guards posted at the Fort Wayne Army gate is visually modelled on Stein. The other ghost in the same scene is based on Eugene Levy, who also had a minor role in Ghostbusters II.9 The two actors sharing an in-universe ghost afterlife is a deliberate visual in-joke by the series' artists.
Personal life
Stein married Alexandra Denman in 1968. The couple divorced in 1974 and remarried in 1977.1 He has maintained residences in Beverly Hills and Malibu, California, in Sandpoint, Idaho, and at the Watergate complex in Washington, D.C.
References
Some content on this page was researched using the Ghostbusters Wiki on Fandom.
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"Ben Stein," Wikipedia, accessed 2026-06-13, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ben_Stein.
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"Ben Stein," IMDb, accessed 2026-06-13, https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0825401/.
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"Win Ben Stein's Money," Wikipedia, accessed 2026-06-13, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Win_Ben_Stein%27s_Money.
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"Montgomery Blair High School," Wikipedia, accessed 2026-06-13, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Montgomery_Blair_High_School. Notable alumni section lists Stallone as "attended briefly before moving to Philadelphia."
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Yahoo Entertainment, "Ben Stein Makes Rare Appearance" (May 7, 2026), https://www.yahoo.com/entertainment/movies/articles/ben-stein-makes-rare-appearance-184822579.html. Ben Stein and co-star Alan Ruck appeared onstage at the TCL Chinese Theatre for the 40th-anniversary screening of Ferris Bueller's Day Off.
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"Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed," Wikipedia, accessed 2026-06-13, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Expelled:_No_Intelligence_Allowed.
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Anti-Defamation League, statement on Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed (April 29, 2008). "The film misappropriates the Holocaust and its imagery as a part of its political effort to discredit the scientific community which rejects so-called intelligent design theory." Quoted via Wikipedia, "Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed," https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Expelled:_No_Intelligence_Allowed.
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"Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed," Rotten Tomatoes, accessed 2026-06-13, https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/expelled_no_intelligence_allowed. 11% approval based on 44 critics' reviews.
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Ghostbusters Vol. 1, Issue #9 (IDW Publishing, 2012), p. 10. Ghost guards at the Fort Wayne Army gate are visually modelled on Ben Stein and Eugene Levy, both of whom appeared in Ghostbusters II.
