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Maya Rudolph and director Paul Thomas Anderson have been together for more than 20 years, forming one of Hollywood’s most enduring private partnerships. Anderson is an acclaimed director who has been nominated for numerous Oscars and has won numerous accolades. Although the two were never legally married, Rudolph affectionately refers to Anderson as her husband and they have four children together.
Maya Rudolph and Paul Thomas Anderson are one of Hollywood’s quiet power couples. Even though the Root star and the acclaimed filmmaker have been together for more than 20 years, they’ve kept their relationship low-key, rarely appearing on red carpets together and not sharing revealing posts of each other on social media.
While Rudolph is known for his on-screen roles, Anderson is an accomplished creator in his own right, an Oscar-nominated director who helped define modern American cinema. Here’s what you need to know about the filmmaker.
He began directing at an early age and attended New York University for two days.
Born on June 26, 1970 in Los Angeles, Anderson grew up surrounded by show business, with his father, Ernie Anderson, being a well-known radio and television personality, and began directing at an early age. “My mom always says I didn’t start directing when I was 26 or 27, I started directing when I was four or five,” Anderson told The New Yorker in 2021. “My mother tells me these stories about how I get everyone together and organize a show.”
He attended New York University for two days and then dropped out to focus on making short films. Shortly after, in 1993, Anderson released a short film, Cigarettes and Coffee, starring Philip Baker Hall, whom Anderson met while working as production assistants on the set of another film.
Anderson broke out in the late ’90s and early 2000s with Hard Eight (his feature film directorial debut, which grew out of Cigarettes & Coffee), Boogie Nights, and Magnolia. These projects helped establish his signature film style of boldness, complexity, and emotional intensity.
Since then, he has built an extensive filmography, directing films such as Punch-Drunk Love (2002), There Will Be Blood (2007), The Master (2012), Phantom Thread (2017), and Liquorice Pizza (2021), which earned him an Oscar nomination and popularity among critics and filmmakers alike. He has also directed several music videos for artists such as Haim, Radiohead, and Michael Penn.
He has received numerous accolades, including multiple Oscar nominations.
Anderson’s professional accolades include 11 Academy Award nominations, as well as multiple BAFTA and Golden Globe nominations. Most recently, he was nominated for three Academy Awards for Best Picture, Best Director, and Best Original Screenplay for his hit youth film, Liquorice Pizza. In June, it appeared on the New York Times’ special list of “100 Best Movies of the 21st Century” for the fourth time.
His latest film, One Battle After Another, released in September 2025, received critical acclaim and is already generating Oscar buzz.
He and Rudolph started dating more than 20 years ago and now have four children together.
Anderson and Rudolph met at a Saturday Night Live afterparty in the early 2000s, when the actress was part of the show’s ensemble cast. “He saw me in the sketch and said, ‘That’s the girl I’m going to marry,'” Rudolph recalled to Town & Country in 2024. “But I don’t know. I wasn’t there. Maybe he just told me that to be nice,” she added.
The two started dating soon after and have been together ever since. The couple have four children, Pearl, Lucille, Jack and Minnie, and although they were never legally married, Rudolph told the New York Times that she calls Anderson her husband because “people know what that means.” She added, “I mean, he’s the father of my child, I live with him, we’re a couple, and we’re not going anywhere.”
They keep their relationship top secret.
Despite their shared fame, Rudolph and Anderson rarely discuss each other in detail. But small glimpses of their partnership have surfaced over the years. Anderson specifically cast Rudolph in his films Inherent Vice and Licorice Pizza.
In 2015, Rudolph spoke on the Today show about working with Anderson on Inherent Vice. “We actually had a lot of fun playing dress up and going to work together,” she said. “When you see someone doing great things, it’s really gratifying. Paul is a really great coach.”
Anderson previously revealed that nursing Rudolph after he became ill was the inspiration for the 2017 film Phantom Thread. “When I get sick, I deal with it in a few different ways. First, I get really cranky and pretend I’m not sick because I don’t want to slow down. I don’t want to miss anything, and usually that works out. But if that doesn’t work and I get really sick and end up on my back, I need help and I’m vulnerable,” he told Collider in 2018. And I looked up and my wife (Maya Rudolph) looked at me with tenderness, and I thought, “Does she want to keep me like this, maybe for a week or two?” ”
The director also gave Rudolph a sweet shout-out in January 2018 during an “Ask Me Anything” session on Reddit. According to NBC, when a user asked actress and comedian Rudolph how often she “falls over laughing,” Anderson replied, “Every day.”
