Anna Paquin has a career many actresses envy and definitely strive toward. While she’s been acting for over 20 years, her biggest breakout role was X-Men, the original movie. As she’s not returning in a major way to X-Men: Days of Future Past, we wanted to honor her with a little retrospective. Anna Paquin’s first role is quite remarkable. She was born in Canada, however to a mother from New Zealand. The family moved back to NZ when Anna was a small child, leading her to the opportunity to attend an open call for a film called The Piano by Jane Campion. Anna ended up winning the role out of over 5000 girls…and won an Oscar for her performance at age 11. This made her the second youngest Academy Award Winner in history and paved the way for her career.
After the only break in her extensive career (a mere 20-some-odd months) her next notable role was in Jane Eyre but it wasn’t until she starred opposite Jeff Daniels in the beloved film Fly Away Home that mass love for her was reinvigorated. She carried the film with a wisdom and tenderness well beyond her years.
Anna navigated awkward teen years well; her face continued to look beautiful and her signature gap-toothed smile only served to highlight her beauty. 2000 was a banner year for her, with turns in both Almost Famous and X-Men. Her role as Rogue in X-Men made her an undeniable A-lister, although she had already occupied that space for many years prior.
Anna has repeatedly talked about how her life is so much in the public as to make her feel at times uncomfortable but it hasn’t stopped her from continuing to entertain multitudes.
Anna reprised her role as Rogue in two subsequent X-Men films, before squarely turning her eye to television. In 2008 she signed on to topline a series for HBO in a questionable genre at the time – vampires—as a character named Sookie Stackhouse for a show called True Blood. While the show was based on a popular book series, vampires were still questionable in terms of commerciality at the time.
The role changed her life in many ways…she crossed over to TV in a time when it was just becoming the major powerhouse it is today; she ended up marrying her co-star on the show and is now the mother to twins. They co-own a production company together with several projects in the pipeline, which is where we expect to see her next.
Anna has always been and continues to be a trailblazer, and while she only appears in X-Men in glancing passes, we love her as much, if not more, than in her debut. Cheers to you, Anna!