Justin Theroux is aware of all the criticism aimed at Zoolander 2 and says he takes it more personally as he was deeply involved in the film.

The 45-year-old actor co-wrote the sequel to the 2001 comedy with Ben Stiller and admits the amount of poor reviews truly bothered him.

He told The Hollywood Reporter: “That movie I thought was just beautiful. Of course it sucks when you feel like people aren’t liking it. If you drop your kid off at school, you don’t want every bully in the class to start taking shots at him. So everything I get to work on, I like when people are kind to it, but it’s not the thing that defines it.

I think it’s that thing where you go – I usually try and not pay too much or grade myself too much on the reception of anything because I know I’ve done stinkers that have been well-received or things that I think are great that have been poorly received either financially or critically or whatever. But I’m also a big believer in that the experience is the thing. That’s the reason why you’re doing it is to have that experience. If we all did things just for the reception, we’d make s**t.”

But the actor refuses to stay down due to the film’s bad reception, as he had a fantastic time working from start to finish and praised Ben for his support.

He continued: “So obviously you want to keep an eye on it because there is some – no one’s going to let you keep doing what you do if everything sucks – but like ‘Zoolander’, for example, from start to finish, the experience of that, was some of the happiest experiences I’ve had from sitting down with Ben and breaking it to the writing of it to the shooting of it was all fabulous. Three to five years of fabulous memories of that movie.”

While he works as both an actor and screenwriter, Justin can’t help but feel more crushed when a film he has personally written goes badly.

“I enjoy them both enormously. Writing is harder than acting. I enjoy acting for just the brevity with which you can be in the experience of doing it.

Writing is kind of more satisfying in that you’re creating a world and doing something that feels bigger, but it’s very time consuming and has a higher threshold for failure.

I take it harder when something I wrote doesn’t do well or isn’t received well. But it’s two different things. One’s an entree; one’s a dessert, I guess.”