Alia Shawkat Movies and Career Information

Alia Martine Shawkat (pronounced /ˈæliə ˈʃoʊkɑːt/; born April 18, 1989) is an American actress. She is best known for her role as Maeby Fünke in the Fox Network series Arrested Development. Shawkat was born in Riverside, California, to actor Tony Shawkat, and Dina Burke; she has two brothers. She grew up in nearby Palm Springs. Shawkat is of Iraqi Kurdish descent on her father's side and Irish and Norwegian descent on her mother's side. Her maternal grandfather was actor Paul Burke (1926–2009), who appeared as Detective Adam Flint on the TV series Naked City (1959–1963) and as Lyon Burke in the 1967 movie Valley of the Dolls. Shawkat made her acting debut in both film and television in 1999. In that year, she played the daughter of the character Amir in the feature film Three Kings, in which her father Tony Shawkat played a member of the Iraqi Republican Guard, and appeared as a young Sarah "Mac" MacKenzie on one episode of JAG. She landed her first starring role in 2001, playing Hannah Rayburn in the television sitcom State of Grace, which aired in the United States on the cable television channel Fox Family (subsequently renamed ABC Family) until 2002. She later played Maeby