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| Birth Name(s) : Maya Khabira Rudolph |
Date of Birth: N/A |
| Status:
Single
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Partner:
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| Profession:
Actress |
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Full Maya Rudolph Biography
Maya Khabira Rudolph (born July 27, 1972, in Gainesville, Florida) is an American actress and comedian, currently best known as a cast member of NBC's Saturday Night Live.
Rudolph is the daughter of the late African American soul singer Minnie Riperton and Jewish American composer, songwriter and producer Richard Rudolph. She was in the studio with her mother on the day Riperton recorded "Lovin' You"; one can hear her mother sing "Maya, Maya, Maya" to her near the end of the track. Riperton passed away at age 31, from cancer, short of her daughter's seventh birthday. This loss at a young age and growing up multiracial had an effect, according to a July 2001 Rosie magazine article: "My mom was black and my dad is Jewish, and I lost my mom when I was seven. That made me feel really different from other kids."
Growing up, Maya attended St. Augustine by the Sea School, where she met childhood friend Gwyneth Paltrow. The Paltrows and the Rudolphs became family friends.
She attended high school in Santa Monica, California, and continued her education at the University of California, Santa Cruz, where she graduated in 1995 with a B.A. in photography.
Rudolph and filmmaker Paul Thomas Anderson are in a relationship, and have a daughter, Pearl Bailey Anderson, born on October 15, 2005.
As of November 2006, she is involved in a lawsuit over a New York condominium she had leased with Anderson which, among other problems, was found to be infested with bedbugs.
In addition to her work on SNL, Rudolph has appeared on a few television shows, including City of Angels and Chicago Hope.
Prior to joining SNL, Rudolph was briefly a keyboardist and backing singer for the band The Rentals. She sang backing vocals for "Barcelona" and "My Head Is In The Sun," both from the album Seven More Minutes. She recently recorded some tracks with The Rentals frontman Matt Sharp (most notably a cover of Tegan and Sara's "Not Tonight"). Rudolph also performed "Together In Pooping" and "Little Roundworm" with Triumph the Insult Comic Dog on his CD, Come Poop With Me.
She joined SNL late in season 1999-2000 as a featured player, after a stint as a member of The Groundlings improv troupe.
Rudolph appeared in the first SNL episode of the 2005-2006 season (host: Steve Carrell; musical guest: Kanye West) before going on maternity leave. She returned for the February 4, 2006 episode (host: Steve Martin; musical guest: Prince).
Rudolph's musical talents are frequently employed on SNL; she sings as Beyoncé Knowles in the Prince Show sketches, as the Space Creature in the Gays in Space sketches, and elsewhere. Her chameleon-like ability to change her looks, and her impressive command of many accents have also led to her playing an unusually wide range of ethnicities on the show, often with only a change of wigs; she has been white (Lisa Kudrow, Barbra Streisand), Asian (Lucy Liu, Lisa Ling), black (Diana Ross, Tina Turner), Latina (Charo, Jennifer Lopez), and more. As Nuni Schoener, she, along with Fred Armisen, created a couple from an unspecified Scandinavian country, who have unplaceable accents and bewilderingly foreign manners. Rudolph is also able to play male characters (Scott Joplin, Lorne Michaels, Justin Guarini, Mario Vazquez) in addition to playing females.
While it had been reported that Rudolph would not return to the show for the 2007-2008 season, she eventually decided to stay with the show. |
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