Anna Paquin Interviewed by the Telegraph UK

It seems like only yesterday that Anna Paquin was a shy 11-year-old clutching her Oscar for 'The Piano’. But just look at her now – the star of the hit new vampire drama 'True Blood’, and blissfully engaged to her leading man.

Anna Paquin was nine years old when she first became famous for her role as Flora in The Piano, and 11 as she stood smiling and gasping in silence for a full 20 seconds at the podium to receive her Oscar for it. In True Blood, Channel 4’s new HBO hit, Paquin, now 27, has morphed into the telepathic barmaid Sookie Stackhouse. She runs around in tiny shorts, and has bleached blonde hair and a lot of steamy sex with a vampire named Bill.

The first episode sets out its stall to shock, featuring a couple getting amorous strung from a meat hook while watching vampire sex on video. But it has been a huge success in America, winning Paquin a 2009 Golden Globe for best actress in a television drama. It is now HBO’s third most popular series, after The Sopranos and Sex and the City. To add to the mix, and to the delight of the tabloids, in August Paquin got engaged in real life to her vampire lover, the English actor Stephen Moyer. He is 40, she is 27 and they divide their time between his house near Hampstead and hers in Los Angeles. The 'most serious 15-year-old ever’ – her own description – has certainly grown up with a vengeance.

'Oh, it’s a really full-on sexy show,’ Paquin agrees easily, taking a sip of latte and fixing me with brown boot-button eyes. We are at Café Rouge in Highgate, north London. 'Lots of weird, kinky vampire sex and weird, kinky mortal sex! It never put me off. I guess either you read something and go, “Oh, my God, no!” or you read something and you go, “That’s sort of cool!” I mean, the sex is very romantic, and at first it’s very loving.’

Although psychic, Sookie isn’t a vampire: 'Sookie likes Bill because he’s the first person she hasn’t been able to listen in on the thoughts of, so it’s quiet. You can read into that on deeper levels about intimacy and relationships and finding that person you can be yourself with. They’re both outsiders. So when this potentially scary creature walks into her path all she’s thinking is, “I want to go talk to him. I want to see what he’s like!”’

I’m sure this isn’t an analogy for their off-screen romance – the younger, more innocent, rather cerebral girl engaged to the darkly good-looking divorcee with two children by different relationships. But True Blood clearly taps into the current vogue for vampires started by the hit film Twilight. To Paquin its popular appeal is partly that vampires have a 'dark, dangerous, brooding sexuality’.

But I say I found it scary watching Sookie hurtle towards this dangerous creature who was clearly going to… 'Eat her?’ Paquin suggests with some pleasure.

'It is kind of disturbing, but so is putting yourself out there as far as relationships or friendships goes. It is scary and sometimes you are taking a risk. If you aren’t prepared to do that you’re going to have very safe options in your life, but they won’t be the most exciting ones.’

What’s funny is that Paquin seems quite guarded, not the kind of girl you’d imagine wanting to go out on a limb. She is wearing a thick ribbed blue cardigan and calf-length tan boots, is polite and amenable, and talks with precision using words like 'neither’ and 'nor’. She is devastated about the fact that she failed to turn up to our first meeting because she was still on California time. 'I’m so organised,’ she exclaims in dismay. 'I never screw up. I’ve done it maybe twice before. I check my calendar seven times a day.’

But maybe the role is Hyde to her Jekyll; the show is written by Alan Ball, the acclaimed screenwriter behind the multi-layered Six Feet Under. Or maybe she just looks one way and acts another. At 22, she went out with Logan Marshall-Green from 24 and The OC. Two years after that she was linked to Kieran Culkin, her co-star in an off-Broadway play. She finds it rather boring, however, that journalists are surprised she might have a love life and not be frozen in time on an Oscars podium in a beret and oversized blue dress, circa 1993. 'Maybe I’m misjudging people, but I feel like a lot of people still have an image of me in a bonnet at nine years old,’ she says wearily.

To play Sookie, Paquin has transformed herself, bleaching her brown hair and sporting a spray tan and a series of sexy outfits. It suits her, though; with her strong cheeks and mouth, and lack of vanity, she doesn’t come across as remotely Baywatch – more Julia Roberts as Erin Brockovich. 'She was written blonde in the books. There’s a whole series,’ Paquin says, referring to the cult novels by Charlaine Harris. 'And she’s supposed to have blue eyes, but contact lenses would be a nightmare. She was meant to be tanned so they spray-tanned me, gave me a really good bra, some little tiny outfits, and away we go! The blonde just feels normal now. And the spray tan I still kind of really love, having been one of the palest pale girls on the planet.’

She once remarked that she wanted to stop being 'a transient figure in my own life’, and with the engagement to Moyer she seems to have broken out of the work spiral that has dominated her existence since she tagged along after her sister to the open audition Jane Campion was holding in New Zealand for The Piano. Since then she has made 25 films in an impeccably plotted career path, from Zeffirelli’s Jane Eyre at 12 to Spike Lee’s 25th Hour at 18, via the blockbusting X-Men movies to the 2005 critical smash The Squid and the Whale. She has attended Columbia University (she only stayed a year, because she kept going off to make films), lived in New York and bought her own house in Venice Beach, Los Angeles. Today she is the proud owner of two rescue dogs, a border collie/springer spaniel cross called Splash and a Louisiana Catahoula leopard puppy – 'I swear to God that’s a real breed’ – called Banjo.

But having resolutely steered clear of film-industry parties and the red carpet she was horrified to find herself pounced on by paparazzi when she set off to walk her dogs the day after her engagement was announced. 'I’d barely changed out of my pyjamas and it was eight in the morning and about 40 photographers jumped out of the hedge,’ she says in her faint New Zealand accent. 'It was sort of creepy.’ She shakes her blonde ponytail in wonder. 'I was like, “You guys are going to get so bored. I ride my bike to my pilates class. I walk my dogs. I ride my bike to meet friends for coffee. I walk my dogs. I’d neither showered nor brushed my hair the morning they leaped out of the bushes, not that I’m massively into hair-brushing, anyway. Neither of us are used to it, so it’s a bit odd.’

What did her fiancé make of it? 'He was in London.’ What’s he like? 'Obviously he’s a complete monster. That’s an odd question. He’s lovely. He’s very funny. I’m definitely not on any level attracted to people who don’t have a good sense of humour. That’s how you get through the ups and the downs.’ She doesn’t seem to want to talk about Moyer, but says they clicked at once. 'The dynamic between Bill and Sookie being what it is, the fascination and attraction made it kind of hard to pinpoint where it ceased to be fiction, because that’s how we’ve always been around each other. But there was no massive revelation moment of, “Wow I fancy you.”’

She tells me she doesn’t worry he has two children from previous relationships, Billy, nine and Lilac, seven, and says she is not, as rumour has it, pregnant. So is she planning the wedding? 'No!’ she cries. But she holds out her hand to show me a lovely antique-looking ring with a round central stone. 'No, I’m not really that girl; we’re not really that couple. We’re happy and things are good and we’re not on any particular schedule and it’ll happen when we have time. The scheduling factor – my family’s all in New Zealand, his family’s all here…I don’t even know. Not right now.’

Is it daunting?

'No. It feels organic.

It’s more about being family than becoming Bridezilla overnight and wearing some big meringue wedding dress. That would scare the sh— out of me.’ She gives a shrug. 'I wasn’t the girl who spent hours dreaming of my wedding.’

She grew up in Wellington, the youngest of three. Her parents, Brian and Mary, were teachers, into organic food and vegetarianism ahead of their time. They divorced when Paquin was 12; her brother, Andrew, now makes films and helps run her production company, Paquin Films. Her sister, Katya, is the head of the Green Party parliamentary advisory team and the girlfriend of the co-leader of the New Zealand Green Party. She has been fighting brain cancer for several years.

Paquin, who is regarded with reverence in her native country, recalls an athletic, outdoorsy childhood – 'I’m not sure anyone in my family can sit still for more than a few minutes without being really bored’ – dominated by making once-yearly films, carefully vetted by her parents for artistic merit. At 16 she moved from New Zealand to Los Angeles. 'I was away working more than I was home, so it became slightly pointless to pretend I still lived there.

At least when you are in Los Angeles and you’re working on a job and you have a day off you just go back to school,’ she remarks, her voice rising at the memory of what sounds a rather lonely and disconnected adolescence, flitting from America to New Zealand. 'As opposed to if you’re coming from another hemisphere and trying to hook up with your friends on your day or two off . I mean, you live out of a suitcase and you’re not home very often and you don’t see your friends and people don’t invite you to parties because you’re never around. I remember sitting in my room going, “Am I really around so little that I don’t even know who the cool people are and where the fun stuff is happening?”’

After a childhood like that it’s hardly surprising she wants a life of her own. But she still in some ways leads an arm’s-length existence. Her work days are often 18 hours long, on location at the Warner Bros sound stages in West Hollywood, or Louisiana, and almost all her scenes are with Moyer. We meet as she is passing through London on a promotional trip to Poland. She says she and Moyer hang out at restaurants in Venice Beach when she does get a night off back home. Who else does she spend time with on nights off? 'When I’m not at work?’ she asks, her voice rising with surprise. 'My friends are still in New York, because that’s where I lived for eight or nine years. So, you know, the people I work with. That’s where you meet people, that’s where you spend 18 hours a day.’

So what’s it like working with her fiancé every day? 'I love it.’ She grins, giving a shrug. 'Otherwise I’d never see him.’

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Anna Paquin, who portrays Sookie Stackhouse on Alan Ball’s hit HBO TV vampire series True Blood was interviewed by HollywoodTelevision.tv back in the summer where she discussed the show, her fame and how it has all affected her life. A very nice interview with Anna as we see that with all the accolades and attention that she has received she has still managed to remain sweet and down-to-earth.

True Bliss

Oscar-winner Anna Paquin takes time out from her lead role in the hit TV series, True Blood, to enjoy the sun and talk to MiNDFOOD about life, love and living in the moment.

Anna Paquin is about to catapult into a rare form of superstardom, the kind in which a television actress becomes an A-list fixture (à la Sarah Jessica Parker), as her erstwhile rivals fall off the radar. Not that we didn’t see this coming: At only 11 years old, Paquin won an Oscar for Best Supporting Actress opposite Holly Hunter in the film The Piano.

Since then she’s taken on fantastical high-concept adventure (the X-Men franchise), drama (The Courageous Heart of Irena Sendler) and even a little history (Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee, Joan of Arc). But today, as the bright-eyed Southerner Sookie Stackhouse on HBO’s True Blood, she has fully arrived. And her Golden Globe win earlier this year proves it.

“The Golden Globe feels pretty damn good because I’m an adult and it’s the first major recognition I’ve had for my work as an adult,” she says. “Even though I’m only 27, I’ve been working since I was nine, so it feels like I worked for it.”

The second series of True Blood – “dangerous, sexy, otherworldly; a grown-up version of a fairytale”, as Paquin describes it – is now showing in New Zealand and Australia, and is the creation of Alan Ball of Six Feet Under fame. Paquin was onboard the moment she heard he was behind the project. “He’s extraordinary, smart, funny and unpredictable in his humour, and he’s kind and approachable,” she says. “The best boss you could possibly have.”

KEEPING IT REAL
Similarly, True Blood could be one of the best things that could have happened to her. Paquin fell in love with her co-star, Stephen Moyer (who plays the vampire Bill), on set and the couple got engaged in August this year. Night after night of filming (“The sleep deprivation can be rough – our crew right now is starting to look like vampires,” she says) enabled the relationship to blossom quickly.

“Steve and I had a certain instant connection,” she says. “We read Bill and Sookie opposite each other for the very reason that there needed to be a strong connection between the two actors playing those characters. Then that’s the person you’re working with all the time. It doesn’t hurt when the relationship on screen, which you’re trying to create, is one of attraction and fascination. Somewhere the line gets a little blurred.” The chemistry is indeed evident on the show and the role of Sookie – an innocent, romance novel-type girl who reads minds and falls for the good-guy vampire
 – is Paquin’s favourite role to date.

“Sookie’s had a really rough time in her own personal life,” she explains. “Everyone think she’s a big freak. Then this dark and mysterious creature shows up, and he’s not judging her and she’s in no position to judge him. It’s the first time that she gets to be herself, and he’s fascinated by all the things that make her different. And vice versa.”

Though well aware of her effect on True Blood’s rabid fans, Paquin keeps it real. While not particularly religious or spiritual, she subscribes to the famous maxim, “Do unto others as you would have others do unto you,” and attributes her good breeding and grounded nature to the realistic views that her family – who still live in New Zealand, where she grew up – subscribes to.

“If you’re respectful and professional and good to people, what you put out there comes back to you,” she says. “I came up through the ranks before the tabloid media became what it is currently. It wasn’t as much of a feeding frenzy. I guess that’s more good luck than good management. There was very little time to be affected, and my family didn’t value [fame] and weren’t interested in it. It was more about doing well in school, getting an education and doing something with your life. If that happens to be acting, well that’s great. But it wasn’t the be-all, end-all. I was usually at work or school, or at home doing my homework.”

Although Paquin was a child star, while growing up in Wellington, where her parents were both teachers, education was paramount. She attended Raphael House Rudolf Steiner School then Hutt Intermediate School, all the while developing extra-curricular activities such as piano, cello, ballet, swimming, gymnastics and skiing. “I’m embarrassed to say I almost never read books. That’s not something I’m proud of as my mother is an English teacher and she’s tried for years. My reading is work related, not pleasure related.”

Paquin returns to New Zealand to visit her family at least once a year. While her parents are no longer married she remains close to them both, as well as her two older siblings; her sister Katya, who “works as a lawyer for the Green Party in New Zealand”, and brother Andrew with whom she maintains a production company, Paquin Films, based in New York City. Together they produced, and she starred in, their first film, the well-received Blue State in 2007. “It was a fantastic experience and we want to do more of it,” says Paquin. Margaret, their second film production together, will be released in the coming year.

Paquin doesn’t leave her roots too far behind and takes her New Zealand accent with her wherever she goes. She finds it comes out more intensely with her British fiancé than with her American pals. “My accent is a hybrid of things. Recently, I spoke to my mother on the phone [in New Zealand] and I can hear how strong my New Zealand accent is now. If I hang out with Brits and Aussies, that triggers my New Zealand accent. I don’t really know what I sound like anymore!”

Paquin has had stellar role models professionally as well, including her favourite, Holly Hunter. “I’m still in awe of her,” Paquin says. “The Piano was my apprenticeship. I had no idea what I was doing and I absolutely adored her. So I just followed her lead. She can just walk on water talent-wise.”

Paquin’s love of and loyalty to New York City also remains strong. “The pace, the business, the energy. It’s a living, breathing being organism; I just love it. I was 18 when I moved there, I was starting college, I had just left home [in New Zealand]. There’s no place like New York. I love doing theatre, so living in a city where there’s a theatre community is amazing.”

Moving to Los Angeles from New York wasn’t as daunting as Paquin expected it to be. “I don’t drive and I’d lived in New York for almost a decade and I was really happy there – that’s where all my friends were. But I’m living in Venice Beach now and it’s incredibly nice down here. It’s really relaxing; I can ride my bike everywhere and I like being by the ocean. It’s a pretty nice set-up.”

I catch Paquin in the move-in phase (“I don’t know where the light switches are”) with her fiancé Stephen (who is a father of two from previous relationships) and her dog Splash, a border collie crossed with a springer spaniel. She’s trying to be as green as she can be in her new home. “I don’t use plastic bags if I can possibly avoid it. I recycle. And, this one doesn’t really count because I don’t have a driver’s licence, I feel that not driving a car does help a bit. I don’t drive because I haven’t gotten around to it. I always prefer to walk or ride my bike anywhere I can.”

When she’s not biking around Venice Beach, she indulges in her favorite hobby, Scrabble. “The main reason I got on Facebook is so I could play Scrabble. I love Scrabble. Exercise doesn’t count as a hobby. That’s an activity or a chore depending on who you ask.”

While living in New York, Paquin trained regularly to get into shape for her True Blood role. “I had a trainer that I was working with who was instructed to [push me] me, not just for aesthetic reasons, but so I could do everything I needed to do – be strong and have the stamina for a season of shooting television, which is really long hours, month after month after month.

“I do everything you can do in a gym. Box, Pilates, yoga – you name it, I’ve done it,” she says. And it’s paid off. Sookie’s her own little action star,” she adds. “I get blooded and vomited on, and beaten up – everything that the girl doesn’t often get to do in a show or a film because they’re usually the girlfriend. Sookie’s the centre of all the action or trauma.” Paquin also wasn’t afraid to take on multiple nude scenes. “This is what my body has always looked like. It just looks different when you actually take your clothes off so people can see it,” says Paquin.

A PASSIONATE LIFE
Paquin may have sidestepped the celebrity craze, but one thing she has fallen into is fashion. She works with a stylist for her red-carpet choices and loves Narciso Rodriguez, Dolce & Gabbana and L’Wren Scott. “I love anyone who cuts for women’s bodies not boys’ bodies – designers who actually take curves into account. I absolutely love beautiful clothes and dressing up for red-carpet stuff,” she says. “The whole Cinderella thing: The dress, the shoes, the hair, the make-up and the jewellery.”

Her fashion moments of late have been memorable including the Hervé L. Leroux dress she wore to the Golden Globes. By day, though, Paquin is casual. “I’m a shorts and T-shirt gal now that I live in California. I love my jean shorts, my summer dresses and mini tees. I love random bits and pieces that I’ve picked up along the way,” says Paquin.

“I think for every look or fashion idea there’s someone who can pull it off. I mean, come on, does anything look bad on Kate Moss? She could wear a garbage bag and still look like she was in couture,” asserts Paquin. Then humbly adds, “Myself, not so much.”

As for her true passions, she’d like to direct a film someday, start a family and travel.

“India, Thailand, Africa, Borneo,” she says. Paquin supports organisations such as Amnesty International and Greenpeace, and she wants to go to “places like Brazil to support the Great Ape Project [an advocacy group for great apes]. But finding the time ... that’s top of my list. I don’t have a game plan. I go one step at a time. I’ve never really thought too far ahead because then you’re never disappointed if it doesn’t happen the way you thought it would. There isn’t a lifestyle or job where there are any guarantees. I’m happy living in the right now.”

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Movie Entertainment Canada scans, June 2009



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SPOILER ALERT

True Blood’s Anna Paquin Hints at On-Screen Split

While talking to the UK’s Daily Mirror, Anna Paquin hinted that on True Blood, Sookie Stackhouse and her vampire boyfriend Bill Compton will possibly be breaking up. When asked directly about the fate of Bill and Sookie, Anna said,

“Well, no tv show keeps the main couple together throughout the whole run. That would be boring… There’s got to be some conflict there, otherwise it’s not so entertaining.”

While that’s an understandable statement, especially in light of what we were shown in HBO’s first official trailer for Season 3 of True Blood, this still feels like a tiny hint of what’s to come in Season 3 of True Blood.
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I like that she referred to Bill & Sookie as 'the main couple'.

'True Blood's' Anna Paquin: 'I just wanted to do my bit' by coming out

"True Blood" star Anna Paquin shrugs off the suggestion that she did anything remarkable when she came out as a bisexual earlier this year in a PSA.

"I'm not someone who endlessly talks about her personal life for no reason, but obviously, as someone who identifies as bisexual, those are issues I really care about -- and frankly, I don't see why everyone doesn't care about them," Paquin, who is engaged to co-star Stephen Moyer, tells Zap2it. "So when I was asked to participate in that PSA (for True Colors First, a gay rights organization), it was just an obvious, 'Well, of course I will.'

"It wasn't like it was a big secret. It was just a cause I cared about and privately supported, but not one that I had ever had an opportunity to speak out about 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."

Her announcement didn't come as a surprise to her "True Blood" boss, Alan Ball, who is openly gay himself.

"I thought that was really brave, and I say 'good for her,'" Ball says. "I like the fact that she doesn't feel the need to keep that hidden, and she was sort of saying, 'This is who I am and I am doing this because I want to make a stand for gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgendered people, and equal rights for all.'

"But I don't think it's that big a deal, really. I was aware of this before, but when I heard that she had made that announcement, I just said, 'Good for you.' "

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10 Questions for Anna Paquin

Why do you think people are so fascinated with vampire stories? —Enrique Feliciano, SAN JUAN, P.R.
I honestly don't know. I get asked that a lot. I wish I had a really great answer. They're usually portrayed as being sexy and kind of dangerous. But I don't really know.

You've worked in both film and television. Which industry do you enjoy more? —Stephanie Kadlicko, AMES, IOWA
I like both. The way HBO shoots — the way the stories are structured and the attention to detail — is like in film. So there's very little difference. I get to go to more places with my character than I would in a two-hour film. That's really exciting, creatively speaking.

I know people usually ask what the perks are of working alongside your fiancé Stephen Moyer. But what do you like least about working with him? —Okimasi Takim, ST. PAUL, MINN.
[Laughs.] There's nothing I don't like about it. So I guess that's the answer.

Why did you choose this year to come out and proclaim your bisexuality? —Maribel Barton, TEWKSBURY, N.J.
Well, I was asked to participate in a public-service announcement. It's a cause I care deeply about, and it was just the right timing.

True Blood's Deep South setting contributes to the show's sense of danger. Do you think it would work as well in a cosmopolitan setting? —Jordan Dittloff, VICTORIA, AUSTRALIA
I don't know if it necessarily has to be the South, but I feel like the small-town ruralness of it is quite important to the story. It isolates the people from bigger, scarier things than vampires and werewolves. As far as a storytelling device, it works well because there's a reason why all these characters happen to know each other. They've all grown up together.

What lessons do you still cherish from your work in The Piano? Any fond memories? —Luca Zanzi, ALLSTON, MASS.
Specific memories are a little blurry. It was almost 19 years ago. Working with Holly Hunter and Jane Campion will always be an important experience to me because those were the people who taught me how to do what I do. I didn't have any idea. You couldn't possibly ask for a more incredible first-time experience as far as acting, let alone the fact that they were women. It was a really amazing way to kick-start it all.

Where did you keep your Oscar as a child, and where do you keep it now? —Paul Susuico, AUSTIN, TEXAS
Sock drawer, closet. I didn't really want to have it out on display. It felt a bit ostentatious and sort of "Look at me, look at me," which isn't really my thing. So I tucked it away. It's now in my vanity, the thing with the mirror and the makeup.

Stephen has spoken about how both of you are into boxing. How did you get interested in the sport? —Lynn Dougherty, SANTA MONICA, CALIF.
I was in New York, probably six or seven years ago, and I just decided one morning that I wanted to learn how to box. It's mentally and physically engaging. Plus the visceral energy at a boxing match is insane. I love it. We go a lot. HBO does all the fights. We've got a really good hookup.

If you could go back in time, what advice would you give to the Anna of 10 years ago? —Shadaliza Monterosa, FLORENCE, ITALY
I don't really pretend to have anything particularly figured out. I'm just living my life as it comes. I guess whatever I did in the past got me here, so it was probably O.K.

How do you feel about all the extra attention from paparazzi since the show started? —Tiffany Stockton, LAS VEGAS
That's just part of the culture surrounding the entertainment industry now. I think there's probably more interesting things to do with your time than watch me walk my dogs. But hey, whatever floats your boat.

Watch the video interview HERE.

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I love that she called Stephen "Steve".