More recently, he performs in his touring one-man show This Filthy World. He often worked with actor and drag queen Divine and his regular cast of the Dreamlanders. Waters also works as a visual artist and across different media, such as installations, photography, and sculpture. In 2016, he received an honorary degree from the Maryland Institute College of Art. The audiobooks he narrated for his books Carsick and Mr. Know-It-All were nominated for the Grammy Award for Best Spoken Word Album in 20, respectively. In 2018, Waters was named an officer of the Order of Arts and Letters in France. Waters was born April 22, 1946, in Baltimore, Maryland, one of four children born to Patricia Ann (née Whitaker) and John Samuel Waters, a manufacturer of fire-protection equipment. He was raised Roman Catholic by his mother, though his father was not. Through his mother, who immigrated to the United States from Victoria, British Columbia, Canada as a child, he is the great-great-great-grandson of George Price Whitaker of the Whitaker iron family. Waters grew up in Lutherville, Maryland, a suburb of Baltimore.
His boyhood friend and muse, Glenn Milstead, later known as Divine, also lived in Lutherville. The film Lili inspired an interest in puppets in the seven-year-old Waters, who proceeded to stage violent versions of Punch and Judy for children's birthday parties.