Alia Shawkat

Alia Shawkat s an actress, producer, writer, and artist. She is well known for her role of “Maeby Funke” on FOX’s Emmy Award–winning cult comedy series “Arrested Development.”

For five seasons Shawkat starred in and produced the HBO Max critical acclaimed genre-bending mystery comedy “Search Party,” and recently starred opposite Jeff Bridges and John Lithgow in the FX series, “The Old Man.”

She began her career at the age of 11 with her feature film debut as a young Iraqi child in David O. Russell’s Three Kings opposite George Clooney. Shawkat can currently be seen in Zoe Kravitz’s directorial debut for Amazon MGM Studio’s Blink Twice.

Her film credits include Drift, Aaron Sorkin’s Being the Ricardos, the Academy Award–nominated short The Letter Room, Blaze directed by Ethan Hawke, Animals, Pee Wee’s Big Holiday, Green Room, Mike Mill’s 20th Century Women, The Intervention, Adam Green’s Aladdin, The Final Girl Girls, Sebastian Silva’s Nasty Baby (which she also co-produced), The Oranges, Cedar Rapids, Drew Barrymore’s directorial debut Whip It and Amreeka.

Shawkat also starred in the independent film Duck Butter, which she co-wrote with Miguel Arteta and executive produced alongside Arteta and the Duplass Brothers. The film premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival in 2018 where she was awarded Best Actress in a U.S. Narrative Feature Film.

She was most recently seen in Atropia writer/director Haley Gales incisive satire premiering in the U.S. Dramatic competition at the 2025 Sundance Film Festival. The film follows an aspiring actress (Shawkat) in a military role-playing facility who falls in love with a soldier (Callum Turner) cast as an insurgent, their unsimulated emotions threaten to derail the performance.