The daughter of soul singer Minnie Riperton, Maya Rudolph turned a childhood surrounded by music into one of the biggest careers in American comedy. She spent seven years on Saturday Night Live, stole scenes in Bridesmaids, voiced Connie the Hormone Monstress on Big Mouth and now leads Apple TV’s Loot. She has won six Primetime Emmys, made TIME’s 100 most influential people list in 2024 and made her Broadway debut in 2026. She has also shared her life with director Paul Thomas Anderson since 2001, and the couple has four children.
| Date of Birth | July 27, 1972 |
|---|---|
| Age | 54 years |
| Nationality | American |
| Zodiac Sign | Leo |
| Occupation | Actress, Comedian, Singer, Producer |
| Birthplace | Gainesville, Florida, USA |
| Parents | Minnie Riperton (mother), Richard Rudolph (father) |
| Sibling | Marc Rudolph (older brother) |
| Education | UC Santa Cruz, BA in photography (1995) |
| Partner | Paul Thomas Anderson (together since 2001, not married) |
| Children | Pearl (2005), Lucille (2009), Jack (2011), Minnie (2013) |
| Known For | Saturday Night Live, Bridesmaids, Big Mouth, Loot |
| Awards | Six Primetime Emmy Awards |
Ed OrgeronBiography
Maya Rudolph was born on July 27, 1972, in Gainesville, Florida. Her mother was Minnie Riperton, the singer behind the 1975 hit “Lovin’ You,” and her father is songwriter and producer Richard Rudolph. Her mother was African American and her father is Jewish, and she grew up mostly in Westwood, Los Angeles, with her older brother Marc.
Music filled the house from the start. “I was raised by musicians and music was normal in my house,” she told Zane Lowe on Apple Music in May 2024. She said musicians would drop by to play or talk about records, and she thought that was simply what life was like.
Her mother died of breast cancer on July 12, 1979, at the age of 31, two weeks before Maya turned seven. Speaking to Zane Lowe, she said losing a parent young made her careful with the one she had left. “Losing a parent when you’re young, you really look out for the other parent,” she said. Her father later married Japanese jazz singer Kimiko Kasai, who became her stepmother.
She has also grown tired of being asked about that loss. “I’m 52 years old, and I have survived my childhood trauma,” she told Variety in September 2024, adding that she would rather retire the question. She has kept her mother’s memory close in other ways, though, and her youngest daughter is named Minnie after her.
Rudolph graduated from Crossroads School in Santa Monica in 1990, where she became friends with Gwyneth Paltrow and Jack Black. She went on to the University of California, Santa Cruz, and earned a bachelor’s degree in photography from Porter College in 1995.
Career
Music and The Groundlings
Music came before comedy. Rudolph was the original drummer of the Los Angeles band That Dog before leaving for college. After graduating, she played keyboards and sang backing vocals for The Rentals, the band led by Weezer bassist Matt Sharp, and she appears in their videos for “Waiting” and “Please Let That Be You.”
“I toured with them. I was never technically a member,” she told Zane Lowe, calling it her first job out of college. The tour put her on festival bills with No Doubt and Oasis in the mid-1990s, and The Rentals also spent a month opening for Blur.
At the same time, she was chasing comedy. She had watched shows at The Groundlings as a teenager and later joined the famous Los Angeles improv troupe, where she met future SNL castmate Will Forte. Her first steady TV work was as nurse Leah Martine on CBS’s Chicago Hope in 1996 and 1997, followed by 15 episodes of City of Angels in 2000.
Saturday Night Live
Rudolph joined Saturday Night Live as a featured player for the last three episodes of the 1999 to 2000 season. It was the job she had wanted since college. “I remember saying to my dad, I really want to be on Saturday Night Live, when I was graduating college, and he said, ‘That’s great, what are you going to do for a living?'” she told Zane Lowe.
She stayed on the show until 2007. Her best-known impressions included Oprah Winfrey, Donatella Versace and Christina Aguilera. She told Zane Lowe that her characters are always huge on purpose. “I always say it, it is a form of drag,” she said, explaining that the big characters let her keep her real self protected.
Her first child arrived in 2005 while she was still on the show. “It’s hard to work on a late-night comedy show and have a baby,” she told Parade in August 2017. In a 2012 interview on NPR’s Fresh Air, she said, “Before I had children, everything about my life was devoted to Saturday Night Live.”
Leaving did not end her ties to Studio 8H. She hosted SNL in February 2012, March 2021 and May 2024. In September 2019 she began playing Kamala Harris, and in July 2024 she agreed to keep playing her through the presidential election. That impression won her the Emmy for Outstanding Guest Actress in a Comedy Series in 2020.
Film Roles
Rudolph’s first notable film role was Molly in Robert Altman’s A Prairie Home Companion (2006). She also appeared in 50 First Dates (2004), played Rita in Mike Judge’s Idiocracy (2006) and voiced Rapunzel in Shrek the Third (2007).
Her first big leading role came in Sam Mendes’ Away We Go (2009), opposite John Krasinski. She then played Deanne, Adam Sandler’s wife, in Grown Ups (2010) and Grown Ups 2 (2013).
The real breakout came in 2011 with Bridesmaids, where she played Lillian, the bride whose wedding sets off the chaos, opposite Kristen Wiig. The film earned about $288 million worldwide and brought her a Screen Actors Guild nomination as part of the cast.
She went on to Friends with Kids (2011), Inherent Vice (2014), Sisters (2015) with Tina Fey and Amy Poehler, Life of the Party (2018) and Wine Country (2019). In her partner’s film Licorice Pizza (2021), she played Gale, and all four of their children appeared in small roles.
Voice Work
Rudolph’s voice has become one of her biggest assets. She voiced Aunt Cass in Big Hero 6 (2014), appeared in The Angry Birds Movie films, voiced Linda Mitchell in The Mitchells vs. the Machines (2021) and Daniela Paguro in Pixar’s Luca (2021). She also voiced Cynthia Utrom in Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem (2023) and Ally in IF (2024).
Her longest voice job was Connie the Hormone Monstress on Netflix’s Big Mouth, which ran from 2017 to 2025. The role won her the Emmy for Outstanding Character Voice-Over Performance four times, in 2020, 2021, 2023 and 2024.
Television and Loot
Away from SNL, Rudolph co-starred with Christina Applegate and Will Arnett in NBC’s Up All Night (2011 to 2012). In May 2014, NBC aired The Maya Rudolph Show, a one-off variety special. Two years later, she co-hosted the NBC variety series Maya & Marty with Martin Short, which debuted on May 31, 2016.
She then starred opposite Fred Armisen in Amazon’s Forever (2018) and played Judge Gen on The Good Place, a part that earned her three Emmy nominations. She also co-hosted the baking competition Baking It with Amy Poehler.
Since 2022, Rudolph has led Apple TV’s Loot as Molly Wells, a billionaire who throws herself into her charity after an $87 billion divorce. She is also an executive producer on the show. Its third season premiered on October 15, 2025, and ended on December 10, 2025.
Loot was made through Animal Pictures, the production company she ran with Natasha Lyonne and Danielle Renfrew Behrens. The company also made Russian Doll and Poker Face. Rudolph left it on friendly terms in October 2023 to produce on her own.
Broadway and Recent Work
Rudolph made her Broadway debut on April 28, 2026, as Mary Todd Lincoln in Cole Escola’s comedy Oh, Mary! at the Lyceum Theatre. The run was first set as an eight-week engagement, but it was extended to July 5, 2026, after her first week broke two all-time box office records at the theatre. On The Late Show with Stephen Colbert in April 2026, she called it a show she was born to do.
Netflix announced Grown Ups 3 in May 2026 with Rudolph back as Deanne, Adam Sandler’s wife, and filming got underway in New Jersey that summer with Sandler, Kevin James, David Spade and Rob Schneider. She also appears in the 2026 documentary Lorne, about SNL creator Lorne Michaels.
Controversies and Disputes
Rudolph has stayed clear of major scandal, but one TV moment still stings. On her first visit to The Late Show with David Letterman in 2009, the host got her name wrong. She told WSJ Magazine in October 2022, “He said my name wrong, and I just sat there,” and said she felt “embarrassed and humiliated” because she couldn’t think of a funny comeback.
She has said the experience shaped how she handles interviews and public life. In the same WSJ Magazine interview, she explained that she built a public persona over the years to protect herself.
In January 2023, Mars named her the spokesperson for M&M’s after the company paused its cartoon “spokescandies” following online criticism of the characters’ redesigns. The swap was revealed as a marketing stunt around the Super Bowl, and the original candies returned soon after.
Awards and Nominations
Rudolph has won six Primetime Emmy Awards. Two came for Outstanding Guest Actress in a Comedy Series for Saturday Night Live, in 2020 for playing Kamala Harris and in 2021 for hosting. The other four came for Outstanding Character Voice-Over Performance for Big Mouth, in 2020, 2021, 2023 and 2024. She was nominated again for Big Mouth in 2025.
She has also earned Emmy nominations for The Good Place, Loot and Baking It. In 2012, the Bridesmaids cast shared the MTV Movie Award for Best Gut-Wrenching Performance, and the film’s ensemble was nominated by the Screen Actors Guild. In 2016, she won the Behind the Voice Actors award for her supporting voice role in Strange Magic. TIME named her one of the 100 most influential people in the world in 2024.
Personal Life
Rudolph has been with filmmaker Paul Thomas Anderson, the director of Boogie Nights, There Will Be Blood and One Battle After Another, since 2001. Anderson first noticed her on SNL, and the two met at an after-party. They have never legally married, but they call each other husband and wife.
“It means he’s the father of my child, and I live with him, and we are a couple, and we are not going anywhere,” she told The New York Times in 2018. The family lives in the San Fernando Valley, where Anderson grew up.
The couple has four children: Pearl (born 2005), Lucille (2009), Jack (2011) and Minnie (2013). All four appeared in Licorice Pizza, and Pearl later played Sister Coco in One Battle After Another (2025). You can read more about each of them in our guide to Maya Rudolph and Paul Thomas Anderson’s children.
Outside work, Rudolph still makes music for fun. She sings in Princess, a Prince tribute band she formed with her friend Gretchen Lieberum. She told Town & Country in 2024, “I have a really hard time with mean comedy,” which goes some way to explain the warm tone of most of her characters.
Timeline
1972: Born on July 27 in Gainesville, Florida.
1979: Her mother, Minnie Riperton, dies of breast cancer on July 12.
1995: Earns a BA in photography from UC Santa Cruz.
2000: Joins Saturday Night Live in May.
2001: Begins her relationship with Paul Thomas Anderson.
2005: Gives birth to her first child, Pearl.
2007: Leaves SNL.
2009: Stars in Away We Go and welcomes daughter Lucille.
2011: Stars in Bridesmaids and welcomes son Jack.
2013: Welcomes daughter Minnie.
2017: Begins voicing Connie on Big Mouth.
2019: First plays Kamala Harris on SNL in September.
2020: Wins her first two Emmys.
2022: Loot premieres on Apple TV.
2024: Named to the TIME 100 and wins her sixth Emmy in September.
2026: Makes her Broadway debut in Oh, Mary! on April 28.
Net Worth
Maya Rudolph’s net worth is estimated at $15–20 million, built mostly on more than 30 years of steady screen work. That puts her a little above her former SNL castmate Will Forte, whose fortune Celebrity Net Worth puts at $14 million, and below Bridesmaids co-star Kristen Wiig at $25 million (Celebrity Net Worth) and Amy Poehler at $30 million (Celebrity Net Worth). Her partner Paul Thomas Anderson is worth an estimated $40–55 million.
Her income has grown at each stage, from SNL cast member to film supporting player to the lead and executive producer of her own Apple TV series.
Voice acting adds a second strong stream. She has worked on several big animated films, including Big Hero 6, Luca and The Mitchells vs. the Machines, and spent eight years on Big Mouth. Her M&M’s deal in 2023 and her 2026 Broadway run added more on top of that.
Her exact pay for Loot and Big Mouth has never been made public, so the range is based on the size and length of her roles. With Grown Ups 3 on the way and a fourth season of Loot yet to be decided, her earning power looks set to stay strong.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is Maya Rudolph married to Paul Thomas Anderson?
No. They have been together since 2001 and call each other husband and wife, but they have never legally married.
How many children does Maya Rudolph have?
She has four children with Paul Thomas Anderson: Pearl, Lucille, Jack and Minnie, born between 2005 and 2013.
Who was Maya Rudolph’s mother?
Her mother was Minnie Riperton, the soul singer famous for “Lovin’ You.” She died of breast cancer in 1979, when Maya was six.
How many Emmys has Maya Rudolph won?
She has won six Primetime Emmys, two for Saturday Night Live and four for voicing Connie on Big Mouth.
What is Maya Rudolph’s net worth?
Maya Rudolph’s net worth is estimated at $15–20 million, mostly from SNL, film roles, voice work on Big Mouth and her lead role on Loot.
How old is Maya Rudolph?
Maya Rudolph was born on July 27, 1972, which makes her 54 years old in 2026.
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