Anna Helene Paquin ( PAK-win; born 24 July 1982) is a New Zealand actress. Born in Winnipeg, Canada, and raised in Wellington, she made her acting debut in the romantic drama film The Piano (1993), for which she won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress at the age of 11, becoming the second-youngest winner in Oscar history. As a child actress, she had roles in Fly Away Home (1996), Jane Eyre (1996), Amistad (1997), The Member of the Wedding (1997), and A Walk on the Moon (1999), as well as in Cameron Crowe's comedy drama film Almost Famous (2000).
Paquin continued to perform prominent roles into adulthood, portraying Rogue in the X-Men franchise (2000–2006, 2014). Her other film credits include 25th Hour (2002), Trick 'r Treat (2007), Margaret (2011), The Good Dinosaur (2015), and The Irishman (2019). She played the lead role of Sookie Stackhouse in the HBO vampire drama television series True Blood (2008–2014), for which she won a Golden Globe Award for Best Actress in 2009. Among other accolades, Paquin was nominated for a Primetime Emmy Award and a Golden Globe Award for her work in the television film Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee (2007), in addition to a further Golden Globe nomination for her work in the television film The Courageous Heart of Irena Sendler (2009).
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Early life
Paquin was born on 24 July 1982 in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada. Her father, Brian Paquin, is a retired Canadian physical education teacher, and her mother, Mary (née Brophy), is a New Zealand teacher of English from Wellington. Paquin holds dual New Zealand and Canadian citizenship. The youngest of three children, she has a brother and a sister. Brian is of Dutch and French descent. Paquin has stated that, due to the Great Famine, all her maternal great-grandparents had immigrated to New Zealand from Ireland.
The family moved to Wellington in 1986, and Paquin attended Raphael House Rudolf Steiner School, Hutt Intermediate School and Wellington Girls' College. Her parents divorced when she was 12 years old. She moved to the United States at the age of 16. Paquin then attended Windward School, graduating in 2000. She studied for one year at Columbia College, living in Carman Hall. She subsequently dropped out to continue her acting career.
Career
Director Jane Campion was looking for a little girl to play a main role in The Piano, set to film in New Zealand, and a newspaper advertisement was run announcing an open audition. Paquin's sister read the ad and went to try out with a friend; this inspired Paquin to audition. When Campion met Paquin—whose only acting experience had been as a skunk in a school play—she was very impressed with the nine-year-old's performance of the monologue about Flora's father, and she was chosen from among the 5000 candidates. When The Piano was released in 1993 it was lauded by critics, won prizes at a number of film festivals, and eventually became a popular film among a wide audience. Paquin's debut performance in the film earned her the 1994 Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress at the age of 11, making her the second-youngest winner in the category, behind Tatum O'Neal.
The Piano was made as a small independent film and was not expected to be widely known, and Paquin and her family did not plan to continue to pursue acting. However, she was invited to the William Morris Agency, and she kept receiving offers for new roles. She systematically rejected them, but she did appear in three commercials for the phone company MCI in 1994. She later made a series of television commercials for Manitoba Telecom Systems in her birth city of Winnipeg. She also appeared as a voice in an audiobook entitled The Magnificent Nose in 1994. In 1996, she appeared in two films. The first role was as young Jane in Jane Eyre. The other was a lead part in Fly Away Home playing a young girl who, after her mother dies, moves in with her father and finds solace in taking care of orphaned goslings. As a teenager, she had roles in other films, including A Walk on the Moon, Finding Forrester, Amistad, Hurlyburly, She's All That and Almost Famous. In the 2003 English dub of the Studio Ghibli film Castle in the Sky, she voiced the main female protagonist, Sheeta.
Paquin played the mutant superhero Rogue in the Marvel Comics movie X-Men in 2000, its sequel X2 in 2003, and its third installment, X-Men: The Last Stand, in 2006. Between 2006 and 2007, she starred in, as well as executive-produced Blue State. The film is made by Paquin Films, a production company formed by her and her brother, Andrew. In November 2006, she completed the film Margaret, which was released in 2011. She played Elaine Goodale in HBO's made-for-TV film Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee, based on Dee Brown's best-seller, garnering a Primetime Emmy Award nomination. In 2007, she played the role of Laurie in the horror film Trick 'r Treat, which was released in 2009.
Personal life
On 5 August 2009, Paquin announced her engagement to her True Blood co-star Stephen Moyer, whom she had been dating since filming the series pilot in 2007. They married on 21 August 2010 at a private residence in Malibu, California. Paquin gave birth to fraternal twins on 12 September 2012. She has a stepson and a stepdaughter through her marriage to Moyer. The couple reside in Venice, Los Angeles, and visit New Zealand yearly to see Paquin's family.
In 2010, Paquin came out as bisexual in a public service announcement for the Give a Damn campaign as part of the True Colors Fund, an advocacy group organised by Cyndi Lauper dedicated to LGBT equality. The video features Paquin stating, "I'm Anna Paquin. I'm bisexual, and I give a damn." When asked about her participation in the video, Paquin said her sexuality had not been a secret but that she had not "ever had an opportunity to speak out about [it] in a way that would be useful. Obviously I know that one person's voice doesn't necessarily do that much, but I just wanted to do my bit." In May 2012, in an Us Weekly interview Paquin rejected the notion that bisexuality is a choice. "My sexuality is not made up, for a bisexual, it's not about gender. That's not the deciding factor to who they're attracted to," stated Paquin. In 2014, she described herself on Twitter as "Proud to be a happily married bisexual mother".
Paquin also supports other charities and foundations such as the Children's Hospital Los Angeles, Make-A-Wish Foundation, Elton John AIDS Foundation, and The Art of Elysium.
