biography of Anna Paquin

Anna Helene Paquin

(/ˈpækwɪn/ PAK-win; born 24 July 1982) is a New Zealand actress.  Born in Winnipeg 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 age 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).

Paquin was born on 24 July 1982 in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada.  Her father, Brian Paquin, is a Canadian retired physical education teacher, and her mother, Mary née Brophy), is a New Zealand teacher of English from Wellington. Paquin is the youngest of three children, with a brother and a sister Her father is of Dutch and French descent Paquin has stated that all her maternal great-grandparents had emigrated to New Zealand from Ireland due to the Great Famine. 

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. After moving to the United States at the age of 16, Paquin attended Windward School, where she graduated in 2000. Paquin studied for one year at Columbia College,  where she lived in Carman Hall,  and subsequently dropped out  to continue her acting career. She holds dual New Zealand and Canadian citizenship

Mini bio : 

Anna Paquin is the first millennial to have received an Academy Award nomination for acting, and the first to win.

She was born on July 24, 1982 in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada, to Mary (Brophy), an English teacher from Wellington, New Zealand, and Brian Paquin, a Canadian phys-ed teacher. Anna moved to her mother's native country when she was four years old. Her first acting job ever was at age nine in the movie The Piano (1993), which was shot in New Zealand. At age 16, she relocated to Los Angeles where she completed her last two years of high school (graduating in 2000). She then moved to New York where she attended Columbia University for one year. Between 2001 and 2004, she worked almost exclusively on stage in both New York and London. In 2007, Anna was cast in HBO's True Blood (2008), which concluded shooting its seventh and final season in 2014.

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 Oscar winner in history, 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 as well as the English dub of Castle in the Sky.

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.

Paquin was cast as waitress Sookie Stackhouse in the HBO series True Blood in 2008, her first role in a TV series. The show is based on The Southern Vampire Mysteries series of novels by Charlaine Harris, set in the fictional town of Bon Temps, Louisiana. The series saw Paquin doing nude scenes for the first time. While working on True Blood, she started dating co-star Stephen Moyer and later married him in 2010. In 2009, Paquin played Irena Sendler, a Polish woman hailed as a heroine of the Holocaust, in The Courageous Heart of Irena Sendler, a CBS TV film biographical film based on the book Mother of the Children of the Holocaust: The Irena Sendler Story, by Anna Mieszkowska. The film was made in Latvia, and was a Hallmark Hall of Fame presentation for the network. 

In 2010, Paquin's film The Romantics, a romantic comedy with Josh Duhamel and Katie Holmes, was released in the US at selected cinemas in September. She played a cameo role in Scream 4, alongside Kristen Bell in 2011.  She also played the voice of Kristin on an episode of Phineas and Ferb. Paquin reprised her role as Rogue in the 2014 film X-Men: Days of Future Past, 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 on 14 July 2015. Paquin voiced Ramsey in Disney•Pixar's film The Good Dinosaur.  She also played Nancy Holt, the wife of a Confederate soldier, in the 2016 miniseries Roots. 

In June 2016, the Human Rights Campaign released a video in tribute to the victims of the Orlando nightclub shooting; in the video, Paquin and others told the stories of the people killed there  Later in 2017 Paquin starred in television series Bellevue, also being the executive producer,  and acted as Nancy Montgomery in the television miniseries Alias Grace. In 2018, she acted in husband Stephen Moyer's directorial debut, The Parting Glass, and in Laurie Collyer's comedy-drama film Furlough. 

In 2019, Paquin appeared in Martin Scorsese's critically acclaimed drama, The Irishman. That year, she also produced and starred as Robyn in television series Flack and appeared in the television series The Affair.  In 2021, she portrayed the wife of Kurt Warner in the biographical Christian sports film, American Underdog. 

In 2022, Paquin starred in A Friend of the Family for Peacock. 

In 2023, Paquin starred in Netflix Original True Spirit alongside Teagan Croft and Cliff Curtis. The movie is based on the journey of Jessica Watson, an Australian sailor who attempted solo global circumnavigation at 16 years old, with Paquin playing her mother.

Trivia : 

• One of the few actors or actresses to receive an Academy Award without being a professional actor beforehand. Anna didn't plan on acting, even when she went to audition for the role that won her an Oscar. She was accompanying her sister to the audition.
• She keeps her Oscar statue in her bedroom closet so her friends won't see it and feel the need to comment on it.
• Gave birth to her twins (her first and second children) at age 30, a son Charlie Moyer and a daughter Poppy Moyer on September 12, 2012. Children's father is her husband, Stephen Moyer. She delivered them two months early via emergency cesarean section.
• Announced her engagement to Stephen Moyer on August 5, 2009. They met on the set of True Blood (2008), and were a couple by the pilot episode. He proposed to her on a beach in Hawaii with a vintage-style ring.
• Though she was born in Canada, she considers herself a Kiwi from New Zealand since she grew up there.
• On 1 April 1996 on the Late Show with David Letterman, Dave has a man on briefly who had shot for a million dollars the night before from halfway at a basketball game but missed and offered him $10,000 to try a shorter shot on stage but he missed again. The man left and Anna walked on stage immediately and Dave who was still holding the money in his hand made the same offer to Anna who, without any prep, effortlessly made the shot. Dave handed her the money immediately and they got on with the show. The next night, Dave had Anna on briefly to explain he couldn't give her the money but could donate it in her name to charity. There were no hard feelings shown.
• Was 6 months pregnant with her twins when she completed filming the fifth season of True Blood (2008).
• She played the daughter of Jeff Daniels in Fly Away Home (1996) and then his romantic partner in The Squid and the Whale (2005) nine years later.
• Speaks French fluently.
• Her family moved to New Zealand when Anna was 4 years old.
• She is naturally brunette but has kept her hair blonde since she started playing Sookie Stackhouse on True Blood (2008).
• Returned to work 3 months after giving birth to her twins to begin filming the sixth season of True Blood (2008).
• Has an older brother, Andrew Paquin, a film producer, with whom she was working on Blue State (2007), and a sister, Katya.
• When she was younger, she wanted to be the Prime Minister of New Zealand, or a lawyer.
• Has kept in close contact with Shawn Ashmore (Iceman/Bobby Drake) and Aaron Stanford (John Allerdyce/Pyro) after filming X2: X-Men United (2003).
• Her father, Brian Paquin, is a physical education teacher. Her mother, Mary Paquin, is an English teacher. Her parents are divorced.
• Mentioned on Late Night with David Letterman Episode #16.176 (2009) that she had recently seen her first movie The Piano (1993) for the first time in her life.
• At the time she attended Columbia University, actors Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Julia Stiles and Drew Struzan were all registered students at the university.
• She attended Columbia University in New York City in 2000, but dropped out after a year and did not graduate in order to pursue acting.
• While filming the movie Amistad (1997) in Montreal during the summer, she made a side-trip to Toronto to film five television commercials for the telephone company of her old hometown in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada. She delivers the commercials in a variety of costumes in her Canadian accent rather than her New Zealand one.
• Among the guests at her wedding to Stephen Moyer were Alan Ball, Ryan Kwanten, Sam Trammell, Rutina Wesley, Carrie Preston and Elijah Wood.
• She enjoys photography; she used to play the cello.
• She married her boyfriend of 3 years, Stephen Moyer, on Aug. 21, 2010, following a year-long engagement.
• Her father is of French-Canadian and German descent (his mother's family were ethnic Germans from the Russian Empire). Her surname is French. Her mother is of Irish origin.
• Stepmother of Stephen Moyer's children Billy (born 2000) and Lilac (born 2002).
• Is a huge fan of the alternative rock band Nine Inch Nails and The Beatles.

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