Anna Helene Paquin (born July 24, 1982 in Winnipeg, Manitoba) is a Canadian/New Zealand actress.
She's best known as Rogue in the X-Men Film Series and Sookie Stackhouse in True Blood. She has also appeared in 25th Hour and Buffalo Soldiers.
She is also the second-youngest person to ever win a competitive Academy Award (Best Supporting Actress in 1993 at the age of 11, for her role in The Piano, which was her first-ever acting role).note
Paquin came out as bisexual in 2010 as part of her publicly supporting LGBT+ rights, and has been quite open about it since in ways such as pushing back on biphobic myths. Paquin is also a public supporter of several other charitable causes.
Associated Tropes:
- Dyeing for Your Art: She is naturally a brunette, but has been a blonde since starring in True Blood.
- Fake Nationality: She is seldom without one.
- She plays an American Southerner in X-Men, True Blood and Roots.
- She attempted an American accent as Sheeta in Castle in the Sky, but the results were more of an odd mix of American/New Zealand.
- She was an upper-class girl from Boston in Finding Forrester.
- A Scotswoman in The Piano.
- An English girl in Jane Eyre and in the English dub of Steamboy (also a Crosscast Role).
- She played the young Spanish Queen Isabella in Amistad.
- She played a Polish woman in The Courageous Heart Of Irena Sendler
- General American accent in Almost Famous, She's All That and 25th Hour.
- Averted in Fly Away Home, where she got to use her (at the time) natural New Zealand accent and played a character that, like herself, was a Canadian born New Zealander.
- She had a Western American drawl as a cowgirl tyrannosaur in The Good Dinosaur.
- The American Peggy Sheeran in The Irishman.
- In all of these, she puts on the accents well at least.
- Ms. Fanservice: Basically nothing is left unseen of her during the seven seasons of True Blood. She's also been topless and had sex scenes in other TV shows or films at times.
- Queer Character, Queer Actor:
- She played married lesbian Sarah, a police detective in the Philip K. Dick's Electric Dreams episode "Real Life".
- In Tell It To Bees she's Dr. Jean Markham, a closeted Scottish lesbian physician during the 1950s.
- Paquin played Robyn, a bisexual like her, on Flack, a public relations expert.
- Romance on the Set: With True Blood co-star Stephen Moyer. He played Bill Compton, Sookie's main love interest on the show for the first three seasons. The two married in 2010 and she gave birth to twins in 2012. Ironically, while most True Blood fans adore the fact that they're together, the pairing of their characters on the show (Sookie x Bill) largely became
No Yay (the pair broke up eventually).
