How did Paul Thomas Anderson and Maya Rudolph meet? Couple’s relationship explored

Paul Thomas Anderson made headlines this month after his Critics’ Choice win and the recent Golden Globe award for Best Director, as per a report shared by IndieWire. On the crowded Golden Globes red carpet, Maya Rudolph appeared beside him, and cameras later captured her sharing a kiss with Anderson after his acceptance.

Their relationship started quietly. They met in 2001 and, according to Us Weekly, have stayed together for more than twenty years. The Bridesmaids actress has shared details about how their relationship began. In a 2024 interview with Town & Country, she recalled meeting Paul Thomas Anderson at a Saturday Night Live afterparty, noting that he had come there specifically hoping to meet her.

“He said he saw me in a sketch and said, ‘That’s the girl I’m going to marry,’ but I don’t know. I wasn’t there. Maybe he just told me that to be sweet,” shared Rudolph.

Paul Thomas Anderson shared the way he felt after seeing his longtime partner in front of him for the first time. He opened up about the experience during a 2022 appearance on SmartLess, describing the moment that initially caught his attention.

"I don't know if you've had any feeling like this,” he said, “but you see something for the first time and you realize that my life has just changed. I don't know how, I don't know why."

Maya Rudolph shared the everyday effort that sustained her romance with Paul Thomas Anderson

For a long time, the couple also chose to keep the details of their early relationship out of the public eye. When pressed about how they met during a December 2015 interview with The Guardian, Rudolph shut down the question.

“No, it’s a sweet thing . . . Too personal. I don’t want to share it,” she said.

However, Maya Rudolph eventually opened up about her long-running relationship with her better half. In a September 2018 report published by Us Weekly, the comedian spoke about the small but meaningful habit the famous director practiced that helped sustain their connection.

“I think genuinely like the effort to make an effort. [That’s] the most romantic gesture, like, to be present,” Rudolph said at the time.

She continued by emphasizing consistency over grand gestures.

“To show up every day is kind of the most romantic part because you can bail at any moment.”

Months earlier, Paul Thomas Anderson had reflected on their relationship while discussing the inspiration behind his 2017 film Phantom Thread. During a Q&A at the 33rd annual Santa Barbara International Film Festival in February 2018, the director revealed that a period of illness, and Rudolph’s care during that time, sparked the initial idea for the film.

“I remember that I was very sick, just with the flu, and I looked up and my wife looked at me with tenderness that made me think, I wonder if she wants to keep me this way, maybe for a week or two,” Anderson explained.

He went on to describe how the movies he watched while recovering shaped his imagination.

“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. That kernel of an idea, I had in my mind when I started working on writing something,” Paul Thomas Anderson added.

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Over the span of being together since 2001, the couple have raised four children, Pearl, Lucille, Jack, and Minnie, but have never formalized their union with marriage. Rudolph nevertheless called Paul Thomas Anderson her husband and clarified the meaning of that word in a September 2018 New York Times interview:

“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 explained.

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