Anna Paquin

Anna Paquin is a New Zealand actress born on 24 July 1982 in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada, who holds dual New Zealand and Canadian citizenship. Her father, Brian Paquin, is a Canadian retired physical education teacher of Dutch and French descent, and her mother, Mary, is a New Zealand teacher of English originally from Wellington. Paquin is the youngest of three children, with a brother and a sister. All of her maternal great-grandparents immigrated to New Zealand from Ireland during the Great Famine. The family relocated to Wellington in 1986, where Paquin attended Raphael House Rudolf Steiner School, Hutt Intermediate School, and Wellington Girls' College. After moving to the United States at age 16, she attended Windward School, graduating in 2000, and subsequently studied for one year at Columbia College before leaving to pursue her acting career.

Paquin made her acting debut in Jane Campion's romantic drama The Piano (1993), having been selected from among 5,000 candidates at an open audition. Her only prior performance experience had been playing a skunk in a school play. The film earned her the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress at age 11, making her the second-youngest winner of that honor in Oscar history, behind Tatum O'Neal. Following the film's success, she appeared in three commercials for the phone company MCI in 1994 and later in a series of television commercials for Manitoba Telecom Systems. She also provided a voice for the 1994 audiobook The Magnificent Nose.

Her subsequent film work as a child and teenager included a lead role in Fly Away Home (1996), a part as young Jane in Jane Eyre (1996), and roles in Amistad (1997), The Member of the Wedding (1997), A Walk on the Moon (1999), and Cameron Crowe's Almost Famous (2000). She also contributed to the English dub of Castle in the Sky and appeared in Finding Forrester, Hurlyburly, and She's All That during this period.

Paquin's adult film career included the role of the mutant superhero Rogue in the X-Men franchise, beginning with X-Men (2000), continuing through X2 (2003) and X-Men: The Last Stand (2006), and returning in X-Men: Days of Future Past (2014), though most of her scenes in that film were cut from the theatrical release. An alternate version restoring her footage, titled The Rogue Cut, was released on 14 July 2015. Between 2006 and 2007, she starred in and executive-produced Blue State, a film produced through Paquin Films, a production company she formed with her brother Andrew. Her other film credits include 25th Hour (2002), Trick 'r Treat (2007, released 2009), Margaret (completed 2006, released 2011), The Good Dinosaur (2015), in which she voiced the character Ramsey, and The Irishman (2019), directed by Martin Scorsese. She also appeared in a cameo role in Scream 4 (2011) and played Nancy Holt in the 2016 miniseries Roots.

In television, Paquin played Elaine Goodale in HBO's Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee (2007), based on Dee Brown's book, earning a Primetime Emmy Award nomination and a Golden Globe Award nomination for the performance. She portrayed Irena Sendler in the CBS television film The Courageous Heart of Irena Sendler (2009), filmed in Latvia and based on Anna Mieszkowska's book Mother of the Children of the Holocaust: The Irena Sendler Story, receiving an additional Golden Globe nomination. Her most prominent television role was Sookie Stackhouse, a waitress in the fictional Louisiana town of Bon Temps, in the HBO vampire drama series True Blood (2008–2014), based on Charlaine Harris's Southern Vampire Mysteries novels. For that role, she won the Golden Globe Award for Best Actress in a Drama Series in 2009. She later starred in and executive-produced the television series Bellevue (2017) and appeared as Nancy Montgomery in the miniseries Alias Grace (2017). Subsequent television work includes Flack (2019), in which she also served as producer, The Affair (2019), and A Friend of the Family (2022). In 2023, she appeared in the Netflix film True Spirit, playing the mother of Australian sailor Jessica Watson.

Paquin's Broadway activity spans 2004 to 2006 and includes a credit in The 24 Hour Plays 2004. She received a Theatre World Award in 2002.

On the personal side, Paquin began dating her True Blood co-star Stephen Moyer during filming of the series pilot in 2007, announced their engagement on 5 August 2009, and married him on 21 August 2010 at a private residence in Malibu, California. The couple had fraternal twins on 12 September 2012, and Paquin also has a stepson and a stepdaughter through the marriage. The family resides in Venice, Los Angeles, and visits New Zealand annually.