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Anna Paquin

Anna Paquin’s screen career began with the sort of debut that could easily overshadow everything after it. Born in Winnipeg on 24 July 1982 and raised in Wellington from the age of four, she had little acting experience when she answered an open audition for Jane Campion’s The Piano. Chosen from around 5,000 candidates, Paquin delivered a performance that earned her the 1994 Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress. She was 11, making her the category’s second-youngest winner. Acting was not initially meant to become a long-term pursuit, but Paquin kept receiving offers. She returned to film in Jane Eyre and Fly Away Home, then moved through teenage roles in Amistad, A Walk on the Moon, Hurlyburly, She’s All That, Finding Forrester and Almost Famous. That range established a career less interested in one fixed lane than in moving between intimate drama, period pieces and major studio filmmaking. For a broad movie audience, Paquin became closely associated with Rogue, the mutant whose touch can absorb the powers and memories of others. She played the character in X-Men, X2 and X-Men: The Last Stand, later returning for X-Men: Days of Future Past. Her restored material featured in the film’s extended Rogue Cut. Television gave Paquin another defining role when she was cast as waitress Sookie Stackhouse in HBO’s True Blood, her first regular television-series part. She later starred in and executive-produced Bellevue and Flack, while also appearing in Alias Grace, The Affair, Roots and A Friend of the Family. Her film work has continued across projects including Margaret, Trick ’r Treat, The Irishman, American Underdog and True Spirit, and she has also worked as a voice actor, including as Sheeta in the English dub of Castle in the Sky and Ramsey in The Good Dinosaur. A dual New Zealand and Canadian citizen, Paquin has built a career across film, television and stage, carrying the unusual distinction of early acclaim without allowing that first success to define the limits of what followed.