Maude Lebowski (The Big Lebowski). Maude Lebowski is the Big Lebowski’s daughter. The first introduction to her comes when she contacts The Dude through a message on his answering machine after he has claimed a rug from her father’s house as payment for the rug the Chinaman ruined. The rug, she claims, was not her father’s to give The Dude; it was a gift from her to her late mother. The first time The Dude encounters Maude is at her studio. He gets hit on the head and Maude insists that he see a doctor for a thorough work up. Maude is in the market for a baby and doesn’t want the father to have any interest in being a father, hence her interest in The Dude. She is friends with Knox Harrington, the video artist, and may have introduced Bunny Lebowski to Uli Kunkel, the nihilist and would-be kidnapper. She does not care for her step-mother, Bunny. Maude also plays a prominent part in The Dude’s dream sequence, “Gutterballs.”

Maude is an avant-garde fluxus artist, whose work “has been commended as strongly vaginal.” She is also a feminist.

She is played by Julianne Moore.—Tanya Swann