Anna Paquin

New Zealand-Canadian actress Anna Paquin (1982) played the role of Flora McGrath in Jane Campion's The Piano (1993), despite having had little acting experience. For the performance, she garnered critical acclaim and won the Oscar for Best Supporting Actress at age 11. As a successful child actress, she appeared in Fly Away Home (1996), The Member of the Wedding (1997), A Walk on the Moon (1999), and Cameron Crowe's Almost Famous (2000). As an adult, she played mutant superheroine Rogue in the X-Men franchise (2000–2014) and played Sookie Stackhouse in the vampire television series True Blood (2008–2014). For her performance in the series, Paquin won the Golden Globe in 2009. More recently, she appeared in Martin Scorsese's epic The Irishman (2019).


British postcard by Memory Card, no. 675. Photo: Anna Paquin as Rogue in X-Men (Bryan Singer, 2000).


German postcard by Deadline Magazine, no. 20. Photo: Warner Home Entertainment. Publicity still for the TV series True Blood (2008-2014).

Her only acting experience had been as a skunk in a school play

Anna Hélène Paquin was born in 1982 in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada. She was the daughter of Mary Paquin (née Brophy), an English teacher and native of Wellington, New Zealand, and Brian Paquin, a high school Physical Education teacher from Canada. Paquin has two older siblings: Andrew (1977), a director, and Katya (1980), whose partner is the Green Party of New Zealand's former co-leader Russel Norman.

Paquin's family moved to New Zealand when she was four. There, Paquin attended Raphael House Rudolf Steiner School in Lower Hutt. Director Jane Campion was looking for a little girl to play a main role in The Piano (1993), set to film in New Zealand, and ran a newspaper advertisement announcing an open audition. Paquin's sister read the ad and went to try out with a friend; this inspired Paquin to audition, though her only acting experience had been as a skunk in a school play.

When Campion met Paquin, 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. Critics lauded The Piano. Paquin's debut performance earned her the 1993 Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress.

She had started her secondary education in Wellington at Wellington Girls' College, but she completed her high school diploma at Windward School in Los Angeles, after moving to the U.S. with her mother following her parents' divorce (1995). In 1996, she appeared in two films. The first role was as young Jane in Jane Eyre (Franco Zeffirelli, 1996). The other was a lead part in the family drama Fly Away Home (Carroll Ballard, 1996). She played 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 films like A Walk on the Moon (Tony Goldwyn, 1999), Steven Spielberg's historical drama Amistad (1997), and the comedy-drama Almost Famous (Cameron Crowe, 2000). She graduated from Windward School in June 2000 and studied at Columbia University for one year but dropped out to continue her acting career.


Vintage poster postcard, no. 2789. French poster of Holly Hunter and Anna Paquin in The Piano (Jane Campion, 1993).


French postcard by Fox France. Photo:20th Century Fox / Marcel. Anna Paquin as 'Malicia' (the French version for Rogue) in X-Men 2 (Bryan Singer, 2003).


German postcard by ZigZag Posters, no. X2.09 Photo: Marvel / Twentieth Century Fox. Anna Paquin in X-Men 2 (Bryan Singer, 2003).

Waitress Sookie Stackhouse in Bon Temps, Louisiana

Anna Paquin played the mutant superhero Rogue in the Marvel Comics movie X-Men (Bryan Singer, 2000), its sequel X2 (Bryan Singer, 2003), and its third instalment, X-Men: The Last Stand (Brett Ratner, 2006). She starred in, as well as executive-produced, Blue State (Marshall Lewy, 2007). The film was made by Paquin Films, a production company formed by her and her brother, Andrew Paquin. In 2007, she also played the role of Laurie in the Horror film Trick 'r Treat (Michael Dougherty, 2009) starring Dylan Baker.

Paquin was cast as waitress Sookie Stackhouse in the TV series True Blood (2008-2014). The show is based on 'The Southern Vampire Mysteries', a series of novels by Charlaine Harris set in the fictional town of Bon Temps, Louisiana. Sookie can read people's minds. Her life is turned upside down when the mysterious Bill, a southern Louisiana gentleman and vampire (Stephen Moyer), walks into her bar two years after vampires 'came out of the coffin' on national television. Sookie encounters a strange new supernatural world. Director Alan Ball adapted the show for HBO. While working on True Blood, she started dating co-star Stephen Moyer and married him in 2010.

In 2009, Paquin played Irena Sendler, a Polish woman hailed as a heroine of the Holocaust, in the TV film The Courageous Heart of Irena Sendler (John Kent Harrison, 2009), based on the book 'Mother of the Children of the Holocaust: The Irena Sendler Story', by Anna Mieszkowska. She played a cameo role in the Slasher Scream 4 (Wes Craven, 2011), alongside Kristen Bell. Paquin reprised her role as Rogue in X-Men: Days of Future Past (Bryan Singer, 2014), but most of her scenes were cut out for the theatrical release. An alternative version of the film with all of Paquin's scenes reinstated was released as The Rogue Cut in 2015.

Paquin voiced Ramsey in Disney•Pixar's film The Good Dinosaur (Peter Sohn, 2015). She also played Nancy Holt, the wife of a Confederate soldier, in the miniseries Roots (2016), a remake of the 1977 miniseries with the same name, based on Alex Haley's 1976 novel, 'Roots: The Saga of an American Family'. Paquin then starred in the Canadian crime drama Bellevue (2017) and in her husband Stephen Moyer's directorial debut, The Parting Glass (2018). She also had a major part in the epic crime film The Irishman (Martin Scorsese, 2019) opposite Robert De Niro and Al Pacino. In the football biopic American Underdog (Andrew Erwin, Jon Erwin, 2021), she played the female lead.

Since 2007, Anna Paquin has also been active as a producer. For Amazon, she was the executive producer of the TV series Flack (2019-2021), in which she also starred as an American publicist at a cutthroat London PR company that represents troubled celebrities. Paquin gave birth to fraternal twins in 2012, and through her marriage to Moyer, she also has a stepson and a stepdaughter. The family resides in Venice, Los Angeles, California. In 2010, Paquin came out as bisexual in a public service announcement for the Give a Damn campaign for the True Colors Fund, an advocacy group dedicated to LGBT equality.


German postcard by ZigZag Posters, no. X2.15. Photo: Marvel / Twentieth Century Fox. Shawn Ashmore as Iceman and Anna Paquin as Rogue in X-Men 2 (Bryan Singer, 2003).


Chinese postcard. Matt Damon and Anna Paquin in Margaret (Kenneth Lonergan, 2011).

Sources: Wikipedia and IMDb.