Career
She made her debut as a film director with Infinitely Polar Bear (2014). Her other writing credits include the screenplay of The Rocker (2008) and many episodes of The Larry Sanders Show. She was a co-executive producer of The Larry Sanders Show in its later seasons and executive producer of the sitcom The Naked Truth and the television miniseries The Kennedys.
Forbes was born in Cambridge, Massachusetts, the daughter of Peggy Woodford and Donald Cameron Forbes.
Forbes is married to Wally Wolodarsky, who was co-screenwriter of The Rocker and a producer of Infinitely Polar Bear. China Forbes (lead singer of Pink Martini) is Maya Forbes"s sister.
She attended Harvard, where she wrote for the Harvard Lampoon, graduating in 1990. Her mother, upon graduating, went to work for Wall Street, first in the futures market at East.F. Hutton, and then for Merrill Lynch, where she remained for nearly a decade.
Her mother was the first African American woman to start an investment management firm in growth equity management in the United States.
Imogene Wolodarsky, Forbes"s 12-year-old daughter, plays a fictionalized version of Forbes in Infinitely Polar Bear. (The character"s name is Amelia Stuart, but the film is described as autobiographical).