Who Is Maya Rudolph's Partner? All About Paul Thomas Anderson

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Maya Rudolph may be the more recognizable face in her relationship, but her partner, filmmaker Paul Thomas Anderson, is equally as well known for his work behind-the-scenes.

Rudolph first rose to fame on Saturday Night Live and has starred in blockbuster comedies such as Grown Ups and Bridesmaids, while Anderson is the man behind various critically acclaimed dramas, including Licorice Pizza, Boogie Nights and There Will Be Blood.

The couple began dating around 2001 and have since welcomed four children together: Pearl, Lucille, Jack and Minnie. Despite their long-lasting relationship and starting a family together, they never married.

Rudolph and Anderson are also notoriously private. They rarely speak about each other in interviews, nor do they post about their relationship or family life on social media. On rare occasions, however, the couple will appear on red carpets together to support each other's careers.

So who is the director Rudolph has spent all these years with? Keep reading to learn everything to know about Maya Rudolph's longtime partner, Paul Thomas Anderson.

He is from California

Both Rudolph and Anderson grew up in Los Angeles, with Anderson hailing from the San Fernando Valley area, where many of his films are set. He attended various schools as a kid, including Cushman Academy — where he showed an interest in filmmaking at a young age.

"He always used to say, 'Miss Stevens, I'm going to be a famous director. I'm going to win the Academy Award,' " his former teacher, Carole Stevens, told Esquire in 2008.

He is a critically acclaimed filmmaker

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Anderson has been credited as a director, producer, screenwriter and cinematographer on some of the most critically acclaimed films. His most well-regarded works include Boogie Nights, The Master, Punch-Drunk Love, Phantom Thread and Licorice Pizza, among many others. Anderson has been nominated for 11 Academy Awards, three Golden Globes and eight BAFTA Awards.

He was about 23 years old when his first short film, Cigarettes and Coffee, was screened at the 1993 Sundance Film Festival. His breakout feature films, Hard Eight and Boogie Nights, came only a few years later — when he was in his mid-twenties. However, as he told The New Yorker, he had been making movies long before then.

"My mother likes to say that I didn't start directing when I was twenty-six or twenty-seven — that I started directing when I was four or five years old," he told the publication during a rare interview. "She tells these stories about how I would get everybody together and organize these shows."

He has also directed music videos

The Academy Award winner has expanded his talent beyond just film and has also directed music videos for artists, including Radiohead, Haim, Joanna Newsom and Michael Penn.

He and Rudolph have been together since 2001

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Rudolph and Anderson have reportedly been together since 2001, following Anderson's breakup with musician Fiona Apple. The ultra-private couple have never revealed details about the early days of their romance, with Rudolph telling The Guardian in 2015, "No, it's a sweet thing… Too personal. I don't want to share it."

He and Rudolph are not married

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Though the pair have spent more than two decades together and share four children, Anderson and Rudolph are not legally married. Despite this, Rudolph calls Anderson her husband in conversation.

During a 2018 interview with The New York Times, the actress said she felt "ooky" calling Anderson her boyfriend after the birth of their first child and has been referring to him as her husband ever since. "People know what that means. 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 said.

He and Rudolph share four children together

In October 2005, Rudolph and Anderson welcomed their first child together, daughter Pearl. Tina Fey announced the birth of "the little peanut" during a Weekend Update segment of SNL.

Four years later, the family was joined by a second daughter, Lucille. Then, in July 2011, Rudolph's rep confirmed to PEOPLE that the pair had welcomed their third child, son Jack.

"I'm a little bit of a pro. The stuff that I used to fear and used to worry about is so different, like the first time I brought [Pearl] home from the hospital I think I was in the backseat, putting my finger under her nose, making sure she was breathing, [and] asking my husband to drive three miles per hour," she told PEOPLE of her third pregnancy. She joked, "By the third child we didn't even have a car seat anymore."

In 2013, Rudolph gave birth to their fourth child, daughter Minnie Ida. When asked the following year if she would have more kids, the comedian answered succinctly, "Hell no."

"I would be a crazy person if that happened! I would be a crazy person," she told PEOPLE.

The couple's four kids seem to be following in their parent's footsteps and are natural performers. "We have a lot of living room shows," Rudolph told PEOPLE in 2016. "But I'm usually told to sit down and watch!"

"They'll dance to anything," the actress said of her brood. "They're natural hams."

Rudolph has acted in his films

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Rudolph has made cameos in two of Anderson's films, Inherent Vice and Licorice Pizza. In Inherent Vice, Rudolph plays matchmaking nurse Petunia Leeway, and in Licorice Pizza, she plays a casting director.

The couple's children also made an appearance in Licorice Pizza. During an interview on Late Night with Seth Meyers, Rudolph discussed how great it was working with her kids on the film. "That was actually a magical thing, because COVID happened, lockdown happened and then Paul was told like, 'Okay, you can shoot now,' " she said.

"But my kids were not allowed to go back to school," Rudolph continued. "So we were doing Zoom school and it was a scary time, no one was vaccinated. And it provided this amazing experience where my kids, their friends, their friends' parents, my parents, my nanny — we were all in it. We were all around and so we had a little world. Like we were living in the 1970s in San Fernando Valley for like three months. It was beautiful."

His film Phantom Thread was inspired in part by Rudolph

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Anderson's 2017 film, Phantom Thread, follows the relationship between a famous dressmaker and his muse, Alma, in 1950s London. Alma becomes his wife and later, his caretaker, and begins to secretly poison him to keep him weak, vulnerable and dependent on her.

The director said the inspiration for the film actually came from his relationship with Rudolph, though it stemmed from a more lighthearted story. "I remember that I was very sick, just with the flu. And I looked up and my wife looked at me with this tenderness and that made me think, 'I wonder if she wants to keep me this way, maybe for a week or two,' " said Anderson during a panel for the Santa Barbara International Film Festival in 2018.

He continued, "I was watching the wrong movies when I was in bed, during this illness. I was watching Rebecca, The Story of Adele H., and Beauty and the Beast, and I really started to think that maybe she was poisoning me. So that kernel of an idea, I had in my mind when I started working on writing something."