Maya Rudolph's four children cause her "endless stress".

Maya Rudolph

Maya Rudolph

The 45-year-old actress - who has Pearl, 11, Lucille, seven, Jack, six, and Minnie, four, with her long-time partner, Paul Thomas Anderson - has admitted she never envisioned having such a big family, but considers all of her stresses to ultimately be worthwhile.

She shared: "The triumph is the people that love each other. I mean, I feel lucky having - I never imagined I'd have four kids - that was never the goal. I feel really lucky that everyone is healthy and amazing.

"It's endless stuff. It's endless entertainment, it's endless stress, endless responsibility. Everyone's at different ages and levels, everyone's into different stuff. But everyone is into slime."

The 'Bridesmaids' star insisted so-called alone time is scarce in her house, and said she feels slightly awkward when her children aren't pestering her.

She told Us Weekly: "I've got to say, those moments after you have kids when you come home and they're not there, it feels weird."

Despite the demands of raising four children, Maya and her filmmaker husband still try to find some quality time in their jam-packed schedules.

And Maya admitted she relished escaping the stresses of motherhood for a few hours during one of their recent getaways.

She said: "We went to Vegas one night last week to see a show.

"It was really cool because we went to bed and were like, 'That's it.' No one's coming into bed at one in the morning, crying or have peed."

Meanwhile, Maya recently joked she is a "hippy" like her 'Angry Birds' character Matilda.

The peace-loving White Bird carries out an amusing yoga routine in the animated movie and the actress previously claimed she shares many of the hen's tendencies.

She said: "I mean, I'm the kind of person to take it tongue in cheek, but I implement a lot of that in my life.

"I'm healthy as I can when I need to or when I want to, I feel like I have hippy tendencies."