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Anna Helene Paquin (born July 24, 1982) is an Academy Award-winning, as well as Emmy- and Golden Globe-nominated, Canadian-New Zealander actress. Her breakthrough performance was in The Piano, which earned her an Academy Award for Best Supporting actress and made her the second youngest winner in history at the age of 11. She is also the first Canadian-born actress to win Best Supporting Actress. It was unclear which fact was more extraordinary about Anna Paquin – that she won an Academy Award at age 11 for her performance in “The Piano” (1993), or that after the win, she had no plans to continue acting. Moviegoers were thankful for her change of heart, as the Canadian actress continued to give thoughtful, complex, and occasionally seductive turns in a wide variety of projects ranging from big-budget blockbusters like the “X-Men” franchise to independent fare like Noah Bambauch’s “The Squid and the Whale” (2005) to television miniseries like the Emmy-winning “Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee.” For the latter project, she received Emmy and Golden Globe nominations for her performance as a 19th-century schoolteacher who campaigns for Native American rights. Paquin was born in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada, the daughter of Mary (née Brophy), an English teacher and native of Wellington, New Zealand, and Brian Paquin, a high school physical education teacher. Paquin moved to New Zealand when she was four. She attended the Raphael House Rudolf Steiner School until she was eight or nine. Her musical childhood hobbies in New Zealand included playing the viola, cello and piano. She has also done gymnastics, ballet, swimming and downhill skiing, but she didn't have hobbies related to acting. While in New Zealand, Paquin attended Hutt Intermediate School from 1994-1995, where she completed Form 1 and 2. Having begun her secondary education in Wellington, New Zealand, she completed her high school diploma at Windward School in Los Angeles, where she moved with her mother following her parents' divorce. Paquin's big-screen debut happened when she attended the open audition for Flora for The Piano along with her sister. The director was impressed by nine-year-old Paquin's performance of the monologue about Flora's father, and she was chosen from among the 5000 candidates. When the The Piano was released in 1993 it was lauded by critics, won prizes at a number of film festivals, and eventually became a popular movie among a wide audience. Paquin's debut performance in the film earned her an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress at the age of eleven, making her the second-youngest Oscar winner in history after Tatum O'Neal. The Piano was made as a small independent movie and wasn't supposed to be widely known, and Paquin and her family didn't plan to continue in the acting circles. However, she was invited to the prestigious William Morris Agency, and she kept receiving offers for new roles. She systematically refused them, but she did appear in three commercials for the phone company MCI (currently WorldCom). In 1996, she appeared in two movies. The first role was a smallish one 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. Paquin’s career might have stopped after this momentous occasion. She had relocated to Los Angeles, CA with her mother following her parents’ divorce, and was devoting more attention to her studies than to future film roles. Offers flooded in after the Oscar win, but Paquin steadfastly refused all until Franco Zefferelli offered her the chance to play a young Jane Eyre in his 1996 film version of the Charlotte Bronte novel. Paquin’s performance proved that her Oscar win was no fluke. She began to slowly build a film career based on interesting characters rather than high-profile projects. She played a young girl who helps raise a flock of Canadian geese in the endearing children’s’ drama “Fly Away Home” (1996) for director Carroll Ballard, and earned an impressive cameo in Stephen Spielberg’s “Amistad” (1997) as Isabella II, Queen of Spain. While shooting the latter project in Canada, she traveled to Montreal to shoot five television commercials for a telephone company in her former hometown of Winnipeg. As Paquin grew into her teens, her roles matured with her; she was a seductive runaway “gifted” to a drug-addled Sean Penn and Kevin Spacey by Garry Shandling in the film version of David Rabe’s “Hurlybury” (1998), and played the daughter of Diane Lane’s mom on the verge in “A Walk on the Moon” (1999). Not one to be typecast, Paquin also ventured into the teen movie subgenre with the likable “She’s All That” (1999), starring as the younger sister of BMOC Freddie Prinze, Jr., who provides advice on how to woo offbeat high schooler Rachel Leigh Cook. As a teenager, she had roles in several small films, such as The Member of the Wedding, Amistad, Hurlyburly and She's All That. She graduated from Windward School in West Los Angeles, California in June 2000 and completed the school's community service requirement by working in an LA soup kitchen and at a special education center. In 2000, Paquin graduated high school and stepped into the Hollywood blockbuster machine by taking the role of Rogue, a teenage mutant who can absorb the powers and even the life out of her fellow advanced humans, in the film version of the influential comic book, “X-Men” (2000). The film was a colossal success, earning Paquin nominations from the Saturn Awards, MTV Movie Awards, and Blockbuster Entertainment Awards. Not surprisingly, she revisited the character in its two sequels, “X2: X-Men United” (2003), which saw Rogue joining the X-Men as a full-time member, and the underwhelming “X-Men: The Last Stand” (2006), which showed Rogue accepting a controversial cure for her mutant abilities. She studied at Columbia University for one year, but has since been on a leave of absence in order to continue her acting career. In 2001, she acquired New Zealand citizenship. Paquin returned to worldwide prominence with her role as Rogue in the blockbuster X-Men movie in 2000, its sequel X2: X-Men United in 2003, and its third installment X-Men: The Last Stand in 2006. Paquin made her stage debut in 2001 in a production of The Glory of Living at the MCC Theater. She was nominated for a Drama Desk Award, and won a Theatre World Award for her performance. In 2002, Paquin appeared on the West End stage in a production of This is Our Youth. Paquin returned for the third “X-Men” installment in 2006, prior to making her debut as executive producer on “Blue State” (2006), a comedy filmed in her former home town of Winnipeg and starring Breckin Meyer as a Democrat who makes good on his promise to abandon the United States for Canada if George W. Bush is re-elected. Paquin, who co-produced the film with her brother Andrew, played Meyer’s companion for the road trip north. The independent feature was released in 2007, the same year Paquin took on the role of Elaine Goodale in “Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee” for HBO. The role, based on the real-life poet and Indian rights advocate who married a Sioux doctor and bore witness to many of the tragedies that befell Native Americans at the end of the 19th century, made excellent use of Paquin’s soulful nature and earned her nods from both the Emmy and Golden Globe awards. In the summer of 2006, she completed filming Blue State which she also executive-produced, after she and her older brother, producer Andrew Paquin, formed the production company Paquin Films. In November 2006, she completed Margaret, scheduled for release by Fox Searchlight in 2007. Paquin remained busy after her success with “Wounded Knee” with a string of edgy projects, including Kenneth Lonergan’s drama “Margaret” (2007), for which she was top-billed; the horror film “Trick ‘r Treat” (2008), and the HBO series “True Blood” (2008- ), in which she starred as author Charlaine Harris’ Gothic heroine Sookie Stackhouse, whose supernatural pedigree made her a target by all manner of night creatures. In July 2007, Paquin received an Emmy Award nomination for Supporting Actress In A Miniseries Or A Movie for her role as Elaine Goodale in the HBO's Made-for-TV movie Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee, based on Dee Brown's bestseller. HBO has announced that Paquin will be starring in the lead role of the new series True Blood based on the Sookie Stackhouse novels by Charlaine Harris. Paquin lives in the West Village in New York City. |
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