In addition to being one of the most charming and talented young actresses alive, Anna Paquin is the second-youngest person to win an Academy Award, which she achieved at the age of 11 for 1993’s “The Piano”. Currently on screen in “X-Men: The Last Stand”, Paquin remains a popular and revered performer in her young adulthood.
Paquin was born in Winnipeg, Canada on July 24, 1982, and was raised in New Zealand from the time she was four. When she was cast in the New Zealand-set “The Piano”, Paquin had never acted professionally, having only a brief appearance in a school play to her credit. Playing the daughter of Holly Hunter’s character in the Jane Campion-directed film, Paquin gave a precocious and surprisingly assured performance as the angry Flora. Exhibiting an impressive ability at tackling nuanced moments, the young actress effectively portrayed her character’s jealousy of her mother’s affair, while simultaneously retaining a childish naïveté. Having avoided the pitfall of one-note child performances, Paquin unexpectedly picked up a Best Supporting Actress Oscar at the 1994 Academy Awards.
The overnight star soon moved to Los Angeles with her mother, where she completed secondary school and continued her budding acting career. She hit screens next in two 1996 films, “Jane Eyre” and “Fly Away Home”. The latter film, a touching if unmemorable family drama co-starring Jeff Daniels, proved to be a modest success and garnered Paquin significant acclaim for her first starring role. Paquin then gave a terrific performance as Queen Isabella II in Steven Spielberg’s “Amistad”, and appeared alongside Kevin Spacey and Sean Penn in “Hurlyburly”.
After “A Walk on the Moon” and “She’s All That”, Paquin returned to international stardom with her juicy role in the 2000 comic book fantasy “X-Men”. Though the film was enormously successful, an uneven script and some memorably shoddy dialogue unceremoniously marred the mutant-vs-man fantasy. Arguably, however, Paquin’s gentle performance as Rogue and her terrific scenes with Hugh Jackman saved the film from the doldrums of special effects-laden, heartless blockbusters. She reprised the role in the much better “X2: X-Men United” in 2003, and in this year’s “X-Men: The Last Stand”.
Besides playing a troubled mutant teenager, Paquin has recently appeared in Cameron Crowe’s outstanding “Almost Famous”, in Spike Lee’s “25th Hour” as the prey of a lecherous Philip Seymour Hoffman, and as an ambitious college student in Noah Baumbach’s painfully underrated “The Squid and the Whale”. In addition to the comic book sequel, the always-watchable Paquin will be seen in the lead role of Kenneth Lonergan’s “Margaret” alongside Matt Damon, Mark Ruffalo, and Matthew Broderick.