| Maude Lebowski | |
|---|---|
| |
| Portrayed by | Julianne Moore |
| Details | |
| Gender | Female |
| Occupation | Artist |
| Relations | |
| Other Relations | Daughter of The Big Lebowski |
Maude Lebowski is the quaternary protagonist daughter of Jeffrey "Big" Lebowski and stepdaughter of Bunny Lebowski. She is responsible for the thug who knocked Jeff "The Dude" Lebowski unconscious. She is a feminist and avant-garde visual artist. She possesses a transatlantic accent and creates artwork that, in her words, "has been commended as strongly vaginal."
Maude is an associate of Knox Harrington, the video artist, who she sees socially.
Maude first encounters The Dude when she finds him lying on the rug he had stolen from her father's mansion, as he relaxed and listened to a recording of a past bowling match. When The Dude awakes, the rug is gone.
While The Dude is unconscious after being hit by Maude's thug, he has a dream in which he is flying over Los Angeles. Ahead of him, on a magic rug, is Maude, with her back to him. Later, after being drugged by Jackie Treehorn, The Dude has another surrealistic dream in which he stars in a faux-pornographic film called Gutterballs. The Dude, dressed much like Uli in Logjammin', encounters Maude, dressed in a bowling-themed Viking costume. The two perform their way through a Busby Berkeley-inspired musical number to Kenny Rogers' song "Just Dropped In (To See What Condition My Condition Is In)", replete with a bevy of dancing girls.
The Dude later receives a message from Maude on his answering machine and agrees to meet with her. She tells him she took the rug back because it was a valued gift from her to her mother and was not her father's to give away. Suspicious of her father withdrawing one million dollars from the family foundation to pay for Bunny's ransom, she charges The Dude with recovering the money from the people to which she believes he gave it. If The Dude was to prove successful, Maude promised to award him $100,000.
Maude reveals in conversation that she and her father have a strained relationship: neither approves of the other's lifestyle. Maude is also highly critical of her father's relationship with Bunny. She shows The Dude a pornographic film entitled Logjammin' that features Bunny and her nihilist costar, Uli Kunkel, who also goes by the name Karl Hungus.
Near the end of the movie, Maude engages in coitus with The Dude in order to conceive a child. Although The Dude is initially shocked by her admission, she assures him she is looking for a man to conceive with her who will want no emotional attachment to her or her child—someone she will not have to see socially.
