Anna Paquin

Anna Helene Paquin is a New Zealand and Canadian actress who achieved international recognition at a young age and built a prolific career across film and television. She is widely known for portraying the mutant superhero Rogue in the X-Men film franchise and for playing lead character Sookie Stackhouse in the HBO television series True Blood.

Paquin was born on 24 July 1982 in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada, to a Canadian physical education teacher and a New Zealand teacher of English. The youngest of three children, she moved with her family to Wellington, New Zealand, in 1986. After her parents divorced when she was 12, she moved to the United States at age 16 and graduated from Windward School in 2000. She later studied for a year at Columbia College before dropping out to focus on acting.

Her acting career began after she auditioned for director Jane Campion's romantic drama film The Piano (1993). Chosen from among 5,000 candidates despite having minimal prior acting experience, her debut performance earned her the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress at age 11, making her the second-youngest winner in Oscar history. As a young actress, she subsequently appeared in prominent films such as Fly Away Home, Jane Eyre, Amistad, A Walk on the Moon, and Almost Famous, as well as voicing the main female protagonist in the English dub of Studio Ghibli's Castle in the Sky.

Paquin transitioned into adult feature roles by starring as Rogue in Marvel Comics' X-Men in 2000, reprising the character in X2 (2003), X-Men: The Last Stand (2006), and X-Men: Days of Future Past (2014). Her other feature credits include 25th Hour, Margaret, Trick 'r Treat, and Martin Scorsese's drama The Irishman. She also co-founded the production company Paquin Films with her brother Andrew, through which she executive-produced and starred in the film Blue State.

In 2008, Paquin made her television series debut starring as Sookie Stackhouse in True Blood, a role that brought her a Golden Globe Award for Best Actress in 2009. She earned further critical recognition on television, including Primetime Emmy and Golden Globe nominations for the HBO movie Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee and a Golden Globe nomination for The Courageous Heart of Irena Sendler. She later starred in and executive-produced the series Bellevue and Flack, alongside roles in miniseries such as Roots and Alias Grace.

Her more recent screen work includes Pixar's animated feature The Good Dinosaur, the biographical film American Underdog, the series A Friend of the Family, and the Netflix film True Spirit. In her personal life, Paquin married her True Blood co-star Stephen Moyer in 2010, with whom she has fraternal twins. She publicly came out as bisexual in 2010 during an advocacy campaign for LGBT equality and supports various charitable organizations.