Anna Paquin is a Canadian-New Zealand actor and producer.

Paquin was born in Manitoba, Canada but was mostly raised in Wellington, New Zealand. Her first live-action film role was The Piano (1993), for which she won an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress. At just 11 years old, Paquin became the second youngest Oscar winner in history (to Tatum O’Neal, who won Best Supporting Actress for Paper Moon (1973) at age 10).

She has gone on to appear in more than 50 films and series, including Jane Eyre (1996), Fly Away Home (1996), Amistad (1997), and Almost Famous (2000). In the early 2000s, Paquin’s career took a more pop-cultural turn when she landed a the part of Rogue in X-Men (2000), a role she reprised in X2: X-Men United (2003), X-Men: The Last Stand (2006), and X-Men: Days of Future Past (2014).

Paquin is perhaps best known for her starring role as Sookie Stackhouse in the HBO series True Blood (2008–2014), a show with more than its fair share of bi vampires. Paquin’s work on True Blood earned her a Golden Globe in 2009 with another nomination in 2010. Her performance in Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee (2007) earned her Golden Globe and Primetime Emmy nominations. She was also nominated for a Golden Globe in 2010 for The Courageous Heart of Irena Sendler (2009).

In addition to her screen acting, Paquin also performed in 10 stage productions between 2001 and 2006.

In 2010, she came out as bi in a PSA for the Give A Damn campaign.

She later told Zooey Magazine,

[Bisexuality is about] being greedy, or numerous other ignorant things I’ve heard at this point. For a bisexual, it’s not about gender. That’s not the deciding factor for who they’re attracted to.

In June 2014, she tweeted,

In 2021, Paquin spoke out about the bi erasure she has faced because she is married to a man.

If I had fallen in love with a woman and lived happily ever after, I would still be bisexual [...] That wouldn’t erase that.

Paquin also addressed critics who think speaking publicly about bisexuality is “too much information”:

One day there will be a time when it just won’t be a big deal, [...] But while it’s still literally illegal and punishable by death to be LGBTQ+ in multiple countries across the planet then, yeah, I’m gonna keep talking about it!

Paquin is married to the English actor and director and True Blood co-star Stephen Moyer. They have two children together, a twin son and a daughter.