Maya Khabira Rudolph was born on July 27, 1972 and is an American actress and comedienne. She is known as a long-running cast member on NBC's Saturday Night Live, and the daughter of the late soul singer Minnie Riperton.
Maya Rudolph was born in Gainesville, Florida, the daughter of the late soul singer Minnie Riperton (a.k.a. Andrea Davis) and composer, songwriter and producer Richard Rudolph. Her father is Jewish and her mother African American. 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 died at age 31 from cancer, short of her daughter's seventh birthday. This death of her mother 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." R&B Singer Teena Marie is her godmother.
Rudolph's musical talents were frequently employed on SNL; she sang 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 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 (Paris Hilton, Charo, Liza Minelli, Barbra Streisand, Lisa Kudrow), Asian (Lucy Liu, Lisa Ling), black (Diana Ross, Tina Turner), Latina (Jennifer Lopez), and more.
