Anna Helene Paquin (pronounced /ˈpækwɪn/; born July 24, 1982) is a Canadian-born New Zealand actress. Paquin's first critically successful film was The Piano, for which she won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress in 1994 at the age of 11 – the second youngest winner in history. Her acting career took off almost half a decade later when she appeared in a string of successful films including She's All That, Almost Famous and the X-Men franchise.Paquin has received critical acclaim for her role as Sookie Stackhouse in the HBO series True Blood, for which she won the 2009 Golden Globe Award for Best Actress – Television Series Drama.
Early life:Paquin was born in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada, the daughter of Mary Paquin (née Brophy), an English teacher and native of Wellington, New Zealand, and Brian Paquin, a high school physical education teacher. Paquin is the youngest of three children; she has two older siblings: brother Andrew, born in 1977, and sister Katya, born in 1980. 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 also did gymnastics, ballet, swimming and downhill skiing, though she did not have any hobbies related to acting.
While in New Zealand, Paquin attended Hutt Intermediate School from 1994–95. Having begun her secondary education in Wellington at Wellington Girls' College, she completed her high school diploma at Windward School in Los Angeles, where she moved with her mother following her parents' divorce in 1995. She graduated from Windward School in June 2000 and completed the school's community service requirement by working in an LA soup kitchen and at a special education center. She studied at Columbia University for one year, but has since been on a leave of absence to continue her acting career.
Theatrical career:Paquin is also an award-winning stage actress, having made her stage debut in 2001 in a production of The Glory of Living at the MCC Theater. She won a 2001–2002 Theater World Award for her performance. She has since appeared in a number of other plays, but has only once appeared in a play outside of the USA, when she appeared on the West End stage in London in a production of This is Our Youth in 2002.
Personal life:On August 5, 2009, it was announced that Paquin was engaged to her True Blood co-star Stephen Moyer, whom she had been dating since filming the series' pilot in 2007. However Paquin was quoted in the same source as saying that she and Moyer have no plans: "... I'm not really that girl, we're not really that couple ... I wasn't the girl who spent hours dreaming of my wedding."
On April 1, 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 organized by Cyndi Lauper dedicated to LGBT equality.
Paquin resides in Venice, Los Angeles, California.
