Maya Rudolph

Maya Khabira Rudolph (born July 27, 1972) is an American actress, comedian and singer. In 2000, she became a cast member on Saturday Night Live, then played supporting roles in films such as 50 First Dates (2004), A Prairie Home Companion (2006), and Idiocracy (2006).After leaving Saturday Night Live in 2007, Rudolph appeared in films including Grown Ups (2010), Bridesmaids (2011), Grown Ups 2 (2013), Inherent Vice (2014), Sisters (2015), CHiPs (2017), Life of the Party (2018), and Wine Country (2019). Her voice acting includes the animated films Shrek the Third (2007), Big Hero 6 (2014), The Angry Birds Movie (2016), The Emoji Movie (2017), The Angry Birds Movie 2 (2019), The Willoughbys (2020), The Mitchells vs. the Machines (2021), and Luca (2021).Rudolph starred as Ava Alexander in the NBC sitcom Up All Night (2011–2012), and co-hosted the variety series Maya & Marty (2016) with Martin Short. She voiced various characters in the Netflix animated sitcom Big Mouth (2017–present), which won her Primetime Emmy Awards in 2020 and 2021, and the Fox animated sitcom Bless the Harts (2019–2021). She appeared in the NBC fantasy comedy series The Good Place (2018–2020), for which she received three Primetime Emmy Award nominations. For her portrayal of United States senator and vice-presidential candidate Kamala Harris on Saturday Night Live, she won the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Guest Actress in a Comedy Series. She continued to reprise the role throughout 2020 while Harris campaigned for and was elected vice president.

Rudolph has been in a relationship with filmmaker Paul Thomas Anderson since 2001, whom she refers to as her husband, although they are not legally married. They live in the San Fernando Valley with their four children: daughters Pearl (born October 2005) and Lucille (born November 6, 2009), son Jack (born July 3, 2011), and daughter Ida (born August 2013).

Rudolph was born in Gainesville, Florida, to singer-songwriter Minnie Riperton and composer Richard Rudolph. Her mother was African-American and her father is Ashkenazi Jewish. Her paternal grandfather was Sidney Rudolph, a philanthropist who once owned all of the Wendy's and Rudy's restaurants in Miami-Dade County, Florida. Her great-grandfather was born in Vilnius, Lithuania, changed his surname from "Rudashevsky" to "Rudolph", and was one of the founding members of Congregation Beth Shalom, a Conservative Jewish synagogue in the Squirrel Hill neighborhood of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Rudolph's godmother was R&B singer Teena Marie.Rudolph's parents moved to Los Angeles, California, when she and her brother Marc were very young, and they grew up primarily in the Westwood neighborhood. Near the end of the song "Lovin' You", Riperton repeats "Maya". She incorporated this into her performance on The Midnight Special. She died of breast cancer on July 12, 1979, at age 31, two weeks before Maya's seventh birthday. In 1990, Rudolph graduated from Crossroads School in Santa Monica, California, where she befriended schoolmates Gwyneth Paltrow and Jack Black. She attended the University of California, Santa Cruz, living in Porter College. She graduated in 1995 with a Bachelor of Arts degree in photography.