Laurie Metcalf’s 4 Kids: Get to Know Her Sons and Daughters
- Celebrity
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- UPDATED jun 16, 2025
by Kristine Bowman
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Laurie Metcalf is a mom both on and off screen, raising four children: Zoe, Will, Donovan, and Mae. The Conners star became a mother for the first time in 1983 when she welcomed daughter Zoe with her first husband, actor Jeff Perry. She later had three more children—sons Will and Donovan and daughter Mae—with her second husband and Roseanne co-star, Matt Roth.
In a rare personal moment at the 2017 Tony Awards, Metcalf thanked her younger kids, Donovan and Mae, during her Best Actress in a Play acceptance speech for A Doll’s House, Part 2. According to the Chicago Sun-Times, she expressed gratitude for their support, saying they allowed her to “do what I love doing the most: working in the theater.”
Zoe Perry
Laurie and Jeff Perry welcomed their daughter Zoe in 1983. Though they divorced when Zoe was just 2 years old, they remained committed to co-parenting—and agreed early on that Zoe wouldn’t enter acting until adulthood. “I didn’t want her to have to deal with the stress,” Metcalf said in 2017.
Zoe initially enrolled at Boston University before transferring to Northwestern University, where her passion for acting took hold. Determined to make her own path, she moved to New York to start her career without leaning on her parents’ connections in L.A. and Chicago.
She’s since built a successful career on both stage and screen, even working alongside her parents—sharing the stage with Metcalf in 2013’s The Other Place and with Perry in a 2015 revival of Anna Christie. In a 2017 interview with The Hollywood Reporter, Zoe said her mother never gave her acting advice, explaining, “She’s too good and too empathetic an actor to give another actor any notes.”
Will Roth
Laurie and Matt Roth welcomed their first child together, son Will, in 1993. As a child, Will occasionally joined his mom at public events, including the 1999 premiere of Pokémon: The First Movie and a Thanksgiving charity event with the L.A. Mission in the early 2000s.
In October 2022, Will married Angela Saggiomo in Pennsylvania. His younger sister Mae shared joyful moments from the day on Instagram, including a family photo of Will, Angela, and their smiling mom.
Donovan Roth
Donovan joined the Metcalf-Roth family through adoption after being in their foster care. He made a red carpet appearance with Laurie in 2007 at the premiere of Meet the Robinsons.
In a 2008 interview with Time Out Chicago, Metcalf shared that her experience with adoption helped her connect to roles that explore similar themes. Asked about the plot of Easy Money, in which a character learns he isn’t biologically related to his family, she said, “I do… They’ve dealt with the character’s confusion and my fear as his mother in a really realistic way.”
Mae Roth
Mae, Metcalf and Roth’s youngest child, was born on June 3, 2005. She graduated from John Burroughs High School in Burbank in May 2023 and announced that she would attend Marymount Manhattan College to study musical theater. “I have loved this school since 7th grade and I can’t even believe I get to go here for musical theatre,” she shared on Instagram.
Mae also got to share a special experience with her mom on set. In 2018, Metcalf told that she brought Mae with her while guest-starring on Supergirl. “I’m so thrilled to be here on the set of Supergirl! My daughter, Mae, and I are huge fans of the show, and it was her dream to meet Melissa [Benoist],” she said.
Laurie Metcalf and Jeff Perry: A Lasting Bond Beyond Marriage
Metcalf met Jeff Perry while studying theater in Chicago, and she became a founding member of his Steppenwolf Theatre Company, alongside future stars like John Malkovich and Gary Sinise. The couple married in 1983, but divorced three years later. Despite the end of their marriage, they’ve remained connected through their daughter, Zoe.
“We just knew we loved this girl, and we weren’t gonna screw that up,” Jeff told the New York Post in 2008, reflecting on their co-parenting journey and enduring friendship.
