Paquin was born on 24 July 1982[8] in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada.[9] Her father, Brian Paquin, is a Canadian retired physical education teacher,[10] and her mother, Mary[11] (née Brophy), is a New Zealand[12][13] teacher of English from Wellington. Paquin is the youngest of three children, with a brother and a sister.[14][15][16] Her father is of Dutch and French descent.[17][18] Paquin has stated that all her maternal great-grandparents emigrated to New Zealand from Ireland due to the Great Famine.[19]
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.[11] 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.[11]
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.[21] 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.[29] She later made a series of television commercials for Manitoba Telecom Systems in her birth city of Winnipeg.[30] 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.[31] 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 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.[33]
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.[34] 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.[35][36] An alternative version of the film with all of Paquin's scenes reinstated was released as The Rogue Cut on 14 July 2015.[37] Paquin voiced Ramsey in Disney•Pixar's film The Good Dinosaur.[38] She also played Nancy Holt, the wife of a Confederate soldier, in the 2016 miniseries Roots.[39]
Paquin will star in True Spirit alongside Teagan Croft and Cliff Curtis. It will be aired on Netflix in February 2023. The movie is based on the journey of Jessica Watson, an Australian sailor who attempted solo global circumnavigation at 16 years old.
On 5 August 2009, Paquin announced her engagement to her True Blood co-star Stephen Moyer,[20] whom she had been dating since filming the series pilot in 2007.[51][52] They married on 21 August 2010 at a private residence in Malibu, California.[20][53][54] Paquin gave birth to fraternal twins on 12 September 2012.[55][56][57] She has a stepson and a stepdaughter through her marriage to Moyer.[16] The couple reside in Venice, California[58] and visit New Zealand yearly to see Paquin's family.[59]
In 2010, Paquin came out as bisexual in a public service announcement for the Give a Damn campaign as part of the True Colors Fund, an advocacy group organised by Cyndi Lauper dedicated to LGBT equality.[60] The video features Anna Paquin stating, "I'm Anna Paquin. I'm bisexual, and I give a damn."[61] When asked about her participation in the video, Paquin said her sexuality hadn't been a secret but that she hadn't "ever had an opportunity to speak out about [it] in a way that would be useful. Obviously I know that one person's voice doesn't necessarily do that much, but I just wanted to do my bit."[62] In May 2012, in an Us Weekly interview Paquin rejected the notion that bisexuality is a choice. "My sexuality is not made up, for a bisexual, it's not about gender. That's not the deciding factor to who they're attracted to," stated Paquin.[63] In 2014, she described herself on Twitter as "Proud to be a happily married bisexual mother".[64]
^"Anna Paquin: filmmaker and risk-taker". Independent Filmmakers Alliance Newsletter (Interview). Interviewed by Halle, Karina. 25 August 2006. Archived from the original on 29 July 2010. Retrieved 23 April 2010.
