Ricki Lake‘s younger son was famous before he was even a day old. Owen Tyler Sussman arrived in the world in front of film cameras, as the closing chapter of one of the most talked-about documentaries of its decade — and then, remarkably, he grew up to be one of the most private celebrity children in America. No reality shows, no influencer career, no public social media: just a quiet life, deliberately chosen.
So who is he, and what is actually known about him? Owen is the second son of the talk show host and actress Ricki Lake and her first husband, illustrator Rob Sussman. He has an older brother, Milo, a childhood split between two homes, and a mother whose fame defined 1990s daytime television. This guide gathers the verified facts about his birth, his family, and the private path he has taken since. Almost everything publicly known about Owen Tyler Sussman comes from his mother’s rare comments and that one famous film.
Table of Contents
Quick Facts
| Full name | Owen Tyler Sussman |
| Born | June 18, 2001 |
| Mother | Ricki Lake — actress and host of the talk show Ricki Lake (1993–2004) |
| Father | Rob Sussman — illustrator known for political artwork |
| Brother | Milo Sebastian Sussman, born March 22, 1997 |
| Known for | His filmed water birth in the documentary The Business of Being Born (2008) — and his famously private life |
| Public career | None in entertainment; he lives a private life away from the spotlight |
Who Is Owen Tyler Sussman?
Owen Tyler Sussman is the younger of Ricki Lake’s two sons, born on June 18, 2001, to Lake and her then-husband Rob Sussman. His mother was at the height of her fame: her syndicated talk show had been a daytime staple for eight years, watched by millions, and her private life was regular tabloid material. Into that world came a second son — and a birth that would be seen by audiences around the world.
What makes him unusual among celebrity children is everything that happened next: almost nothing, at least in public. While many famous offspring build brands on their family name, Owen has given no interviews of note, launched no public career and kept no public social media presence. Profiles of him are short on new information for a simple reason — he has never sought attention, and his family has respected that. That distance from the camera defines Owen Tyler Sussman to this day.
That restraint was modelled early. Lake has often described working to give her boys a normal childhood despite her fame, with school, sport and family life kept as separate from television as possible. Owen’s story, then, is less a celebrity biography than a case study in how a famous family can protect a child’s right to an ordinary life. Owen Tyler Sussman grew up inside that protection.
His Mother: Ricki Lake, the Talk Show Icon
Ricki Lake was born on September 21, 1968, in Hastings-on-Hudson, New York. She first found fame as an actress, winning acclaim as Tracy Turnblad in John Waters’ 1988 film Hairspray. Then, in 1993, she launched the talk show that would make her a household name. Ricki Lake ran until 2004, turned her into one of the defining faces of 1990s daytime television, and made her, at the time, one of the youngest talk show hosts on American TV.
By the time her younger son was born in 2001, Lake was a single-name celebrity — the woman a hit Offspring song name-checked, and a host whose shows on family and relationships made motherhood part of her public identity. She spoke about her sons with warmth but restraint, sharing milestones occasionally while keeping their daily lives off screen. Those choices shaped the childhood of Owen Tyler Sussman more than any headline did.
Later, Lake reinvented herself as a documentary producer and advocate — which is how her son’s birth came to be filmed at all. She also became a prominent voice on body positivity and mental health, speaking candidly about her own struggles. Those themes of honesty and emotional openness are ones friends and profiles consistently say shaped the way she raised her boys. Those values framed the upbringing of Owen Tyler Sussman in ways that are still visible today.
His Father: Rob Sussman, the Illustrator
Owen’s father, Rob Sussman, is an illustrator known particularly for political artwork — a creative career about as far from daytime television as it is possible to get. He and Lake married in the mid-1990s and had their two sons, Milo in 1997 and Owen in 2001, before divorcing in 2003 after nine years of marriage, when Owen was still a toddler. Owen Tyler Sussman was their second child, born four years after his brother Milo.
The split did not end his role as a father. By all accounts the two parents co-parented actively, and Owen grew up with both a television star for a mother and a working artist for a father — a combination of media fame and studio-quiet creativity that helps explain the balance he has struck as an adult. Sussman himself has kept an even lower profile than his sons, and little of his private life is public, by his own clear preference. Owen Tyler Sussman grew up with a foot in each of those two worlds.
A Birth the World Watched: The Business of Being Born
Most celebrity children are introduced to the public through a magazine cover. Owen Tyler Sussman was introduced through a documentary film. His birth — a planned home water birth — was filmed, and the footage became the emotional climax of The Business of Being Born, released in 2008 and directed by Abby Epstein, with Lake as a producer.
The film examined how childbirth is handled in the United States, contrasting hospital deliveries with midwife-led and home births, and it became a landmark of the natural-birth movement. Lake’s own experience anchors it: the film follows her decision, after a difficult first hospital birth experience, to deliver her second child at home in water — and ends with Owen’s arrival. For Owen Tyler Sussman, that first appearance on screen was also, for years, nearly his last.
It gave him a genuinely unique place in pop culture: a person whose very first moments are preserved in a widely seen film, yet who has otherwise appeared in public hardly at all. The documentary generation of new parents knew his name years before most celebrity-watchers did, and it remains the single most documented event of his life — documented, notably, by his mother, for a cause she believed in, rather than for fame. Owen Tyler Sussman has lived with that unusual distinction ever since.
Growing Up Between Two Homes
After his parents divorced in 2003, Owen’s childhood was divided between two households, first centred on New York and later on Los Angeles, where his mother rebuilt her life and career. Lake has described the effort that went into keeping the boys’ world stable: ordinary school days, youth sports, family travel — including trips to Italy that she has shared glimpses of — and as little red-carpet exposure as possible. For Owen Tyler Sussman, stability was something his parents built deliberately.
The family also expanded and then grieved. Lake’s second husband, jewellery designer Christian Evans, became part of the boys’ lives — his obituary fondly described gaining the family he had always wanted in Ricki, Milo and Owen, alongside his own son, Taylor. Evans died in February 2017 after a long struggle with bipolar disorder, a loss Lake has spoken about with great candour. Owen was fifteen: old enough for the loss of a stepfather to be a defining teenage memory, and another reason the family drew its privacy tighter.
In January 2022, Lake married Ross Burningham, her third husband. By then both Sussman sons were adults, and her posts about the wedding and blended family have remained, as ever, warm but brief — a few photographs, a few lines, and no window into her sons’ own lives beyond what they choose to allow. Owen Tyler Sussman was by then an adult, building a life of his own.
Education, Basketball and Reported Interests
Details of Owen’s schooling are not a matter of public record, and he has never discussed his education in interviews. What has been reported — via his mother’s own social media — is that she dropped him off to begin college in Chicago, Illinois, sharing a proud photograph of the moment. Reports at the time placed him at around nineteen, in keeping with his June 2001 birth date. Owen Tyler Sussman began that new chapter far from the cameras that filmed his birth.
As a boy he was sporty: he played youth basketball for a team called the Palisades Ducks, while his older brother Milo played for the Wildcats, and the brothers were photographed together at games and family events. Travel was part of his upbringing too, with family trips abroad, including to Italy, mentioned by his mother over the years.
Beyond that, profiles of Owen Tyler Sussman credit him with interests in music, photography and environmental causes such as ocean conservation — claims that circulate widely in celebrity-biography write-ups, though he has never confirmed a public platform for any of them himself. The honest summary is simpler: his studies and interests are his own business, and he has kept them that way.
Choosing Privacy in a Famous Family
The defining fact of Owen’s adult life is a negative space: no verified public Instagram, no TikTok brand, no podcast, no memoir, no reality television. In an era when the children of 1990s celebrities routinely monetise their surnames, that absence is itself the story — and, by every account, a conscious choice rather than an accident. Owen Tyler Sussman made that choice early, and he has never publicly reconsidered it.
It helps that his mother’s mentions of him are models of restraint. Lake posts about her sons the way many proud parents do — a birthday tribute, a back-to-school photograph, a note of pride — and then stops. There are no staged family shoots or tell-all interviews trading on the boys’ lives, which has allowed both brothers to reach adulthood as private citizens who happen to have a famous mother.
Commentators often place him within a broader shift among the children of celebrities: a generation that watched fame’s costs up close — in his family’s case, including intense media scrutiny and private grief played out in public — and quietly opted out. Whether Owen ever chooses a public role is unknowable; what is clear is that, so far, privacy has not been a phase but a pattern. He is not alone among celebrity children in choosing that path: another who has grown up away from the spotlight is John McEnroe’s daughter, profiled in our piece on Anna McEnroe.
Owen Sussman Today
Owen Tyler Sussman turned 25 in June 2026. He lives privately in the United States, is not known to have pursued any career in entertainment, and has no confirmed public role of any kind. No verified figure for his personal wealth has ever been published by a reliable source — any net worth number attached to his name online is speculation, since his finances, like the rest of his life, are not public.
What can be said is that the experiment worked. A child whose birth was watched by documentary audiences around the world has grown into an adult almost entirely on his own terms. For readers searching his name, that is the real answer: Ricki Lake’s younger son is doing well — quietly, privately, and exactly as he seems to prefer. That is exactly how Owen Tyler Sussman seems to want it.
Frequently Asked Questions
Who is Owen Tyler Sussman?
Owen Tyler Sussman is the younger son of talk show host and actress Ricki Lake and illustrator Rob Sussman. Born on June 18, 2001, he is known for his filmed birth in the documentary The Business of Being Born and for living a private life away from fame.
How old is Owen in 2026?
He was born on June 18, 2001, so he turned 25 years old in June 2026.
Who are his parents?
His mother is Ricki Lake, the actress and former talk show host, and his father is Rob Sussman, an illustrator known for political artwork. His parents divorced in 2003, when he was a toddler, and co-parented him and his brother. Owen Tyler Sussman has never spoken publicly about either parent’s career.
Does Owen have any siblings?
Yes — one older brother, Milo Sebastian Sussman, born on March 22, 1997. Through his mother’s second marriage he also gained a stepbrother, Taylor, the son of Christian Evans.
Why was his birth in a documentary?
His mother produced The Business of Being Born (2008), a documentary about childbirth in America, and her planned home water birth of Owen was filmed for it. The footage of his arrival forms the film’s closing chapter and helped make it a landmark of the natural-birth movement.
What does Owen do for a living?
His work is not a matter of public record. He reportedly attended college in Chicago, and he has no known career in entertainment and no public social media presence. He lives privately, and no reliable source has published details of his job or finances. Owen Tyler Sussman guards the details of his working life completely.
Conclusion
There is a pleasing irony at the heart of this story: the boy whose first breath was captured on film became the man the cameras cannot find. Owen Tyler Sussman grew up between a talk show icon and a quiet illustrator, through divorce, relocation, family joy and family grief — and emerged with the one thing fame rarely grants its children, a life of his own.
For his mother, who built a career on other people’s stories, that may be the happiest outcome of all. And for everyone who searches his name expecting a celebrity, the truth is better: Owen is simply a private person, and his low profile is not a mystery to solve but a choice to respect. Owen Tyler Sussman is living proof that a famous name does not have to become a public life.
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