Anna Paquin New Zealander Actress From Winnipeg

Early life

Anna Helene Paquin was born on 24 July 1982 in Winnipeg, Manitoba. Her father is a Canadian physical education teacher and her mother a New Zealand teacher of English, and she is the youngest of three children. She holds both New Zealand and Canadian citizenship. The family moved to Wellington in 1986, where she attended Raphael House Rudolf Steiner School, Hutt Intermediate School and Wellington Girls' College. At sixteen she moved to the United States and graduated from the Windward School in 2000. She then spent a year at Columbia College before leaving to continue acting.

Career

Paquin's screen career began with The Piano in 1993. Director Jane Campion had held an open audition for the role of a young girl, and Paquin, who tried out after her sister saw the advertisement and whose only stage experience was a part in a school play, was chosen from around 5,000 candidates. The performance won her the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress at the age of 11, making her the second-youngest winner in that category.

Although the family had not planned a long acting career, offers kept arriving. In 1996 she appeared as the young Jane in Jane Eyre and led Fly Away Home, and later parts included Amistad in 1997, A Walk on the Moon and She's All That in 1999, Finding Forrester in 2000 and Cameron Crowe's Almost Famous. In the 2003 English-language version of the Studio Ghibli film Castle in the Sky she voiced the main female character, Sheeta.

From 2000 she played Rogue in the X-Men films, returning for X2 in 2003 and X-Men: The Last Stand in 2006. She came back to the role in X-Men: Days of Future Past in 2014, and a version restoring her cut scenes, The Rogue Cut, was released in 2015. In the same period she worked on 25th Hour in 2002, The Squid and the Whale in 2005, Trick 'r Treat in 2007 and Margaret in 2011, a film completed in 2006. She also executive-produced and starred in Blue State, made by Paquin Films, a company she formed with her brother Andrew. Her television film Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee in 2007 earned a Primetime Emmy nomination.

Her best-known television role is Sookie Stackhouse, the lead of the HBO vampire series True Blood, which she played from 2008 to 2014. In 2009 she portrayed Irena Sendler in The Courageous Heart of Irena Sendler. Later work includes a part in the 2016 miniseries Roots, the lead and executive producer credit on Bellevue and the role of Nancy Montgomery in the miniseries Alias Grace, both in 2017, and an appearance in Martin Scorsese's The Irishman in 2019. She produced and starred in the series Flack, played Kurt Warner's wife in American Underdog in 2021, led A Friend of the Family in 2022, and appeared as the mother of a young sailor in the Netflix film True Spirit in 2023.

Recognition

Besides the Oscar, Paquin received a Theatre World Award in 2002 and a Golden Globe Award for best actress in a television drama for True Blood in 2009. She has also received Golden Globe nominations for her television film work. In 2017 she was honoured on Canada's Walk of Fame.

Personal life

Paquin met the actor Stephen Moyer during the filming of the True Blood pilot, and they married on 21 August 2010 in Malibu, California. She has two children. In 2010 she took part in a video for the True Colors Fund's Give a Damn campaign, speaking publicly about her bisexuality. She supports several charities, among them Children's Hospital Los Angeles, the Make-A-Wish Foundation, the Elton John AIDS Foundation and The Art of Elysium.