From Fashion:

After changing into her favoured cover look—a Jackie Onassis-like Marc Jacobs dress trimmed with silver studs—Paquin dashes in front of the lens, occasionally cracking jokes and posing without any forced fabulousness. Her good humour remains intact long after the array of designer heels and baubles are put away and we are left alone to talk.

“This is going to be an interesting dance,” she says with a laugh, referring to HBO’s strict no-spoiler policy for True Blood’s much-anticipated fifth-season premiere on June 10. “Plot twists are everything in this show. Everything.”

Paquin’s role in True Blood is, literally, the stuff of legends. As the centrepiece of the series, she plays Sookie Stackhouse, a telepathic waitress with a penchant for short shorts, Sun In and the affections of fanged men. Dodging three searing-hot love interests at once—1,000-year-old Nordic vampire Eric Northman (Alexander Skarsgård), former Civil War soldier?/modern Dracula type Bill Compton (played by Stephen Moyer, Paquin’s husband) and virile, hulking werewolf Alcide Herveaux (Joe Manganiello)—Paquin has her work cut out for her.

“At the end of last season, Sookie told all those dudes to back off because she needed to be by herself,” Paquin says. “She’s trying very hard to stay true to that goal of independence, of not being his or his or his…and she’s trying to figure out her own life on her own terms without anyone there to catch her every time she falls. Things will be especially complicated with her and Alcide, since Sookie just shot the head off the former love of his life!”

Apart from the gunslinging and the ultra-steamy love triangles, Paquin says she does make parallels between her own life and Sookie’s so that her performances remain fresh. “There have always been aspects of her that I connect to, empathize with and understand—that’s the only way I can approach my job,” she says. “You have to find a common ground with any character. I spend a lot of time with scripts, looking for my truth.”

Another way Paquin conjures up her True Blood protagonist is by exploring HBO’s vast wardrobe department. “For me, costume is a great key to the character,” Paquin says. “What you wear is a pretty big reflection of your personality. Part of True Blood is told through Sookie’s clothes.”

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Anna will be featured on the cover of Fashion‘s Summer 2012 issue. The magazine will be on stands May 21st.

From Just Jared:
On her True Blood character, Sookie: “There have always been aspects of her that I connect to, empathize with and understand – that’s the only way I can approach my job. You have to find a common ground with any character. I spend a lot of time with scripts, looking for my truth.”

On her personal style: “I’m not a ballgown kind of girl. I don’t think the red carpet is my prom. I prefer edgier cuts and darker designs because they suit me. I’ve learned how to dress for my shape, and I have to be able to sit, stand, walk properly and shake hands in an outfit without feeling confined. I’ve spent a lot of time figuring out what looks good for my body for fittings, and I’ve taken notes. I’m 5’4? and change! I know I will never be like Gisele [Bundchen], and I also know I will never be a hipless, assless supermodel.”

On marriage with husband and co-star Stephen Moyer: “Work does come up pretty frequently, because that is how we spend most of our year. Aside from trying to spend no more than two or three weeks apart, I’ve never been one for rules in a relationship. I don’t have any guidelines on how much shop talk we have at home.”

Anna is featured on the cover of Zooey Magazine‘s May 2012 issue. There’s a snippet from the interview below, as well as a behind the scenes video of the photoshoot. Scans from the magazine will be up ASAP.

An enigmatic actress? I didn’t know they still existed. We had Marlene Dietrich in the 1930’s, the ultra private Jodie Foster in the 80’s/ 90’s and all those other elusive starlets in between. But now? In an era where reality TV, Twitter, and TMZ have excessively fed our addiction for knowing all there is to know about stars? Any mystery has seemingly faded. At least I thought it had until I sat down for a sunny March afternoon lunch at Santa Monica’s M Kitchen with Anna Paquin and the orange peach smoothie she ordered. Successfully concealing a baby bump under layers of charcoal wool along with those Raisinette eyes hiding behind turquoise shades, I realized that she just might be our contemporary mysterious starlet.

From the start Paquin has been unconventional. We all remember her as the 11 year old girl who snatched an Oscar for that riveting performance of a deaf Scottish woman’s daughter in Jane Campion’s The Piano despite never having acted a day in her life. But did she seize the massive career awaiting her after this enormous accolade or did she slide down into an existence of addictions and arrests like so many other childhood actors? Neither. Instead she took a three year hiatus only to return to the screen in small unassuming supporting roles for such films as Almost Famous and Hurly Burly. Despite being part of the Xmen ensemble, Paquin didn’t actually step into a true starring role until she took on psychic waitress/ half-faerie/ “fang banger” Sookie Stackhouse in HBO’s triumphant True Blood. Leaving behind that little brunette girl from New Zealand who captured our hearts in the 90’s, she strutted onto our TVs as blonde, sassy, sexy and southern…and even more bewildering than before.

As an adolescent, I was obsessed with Nancy Drew mysteries. Intentional or not, Paquin has been just that. A mystery. One to keep her personal life fiercely private, she set off a whirl of media curiosity when she declared her bi-sexuality in a 2010 PSA for the Give a Damn campaign while engaged to husband and True Blood co-star Stephen Moyer. Her answer to the numerous inquiries of why she chose to come out now? “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.”

Sitting across from me stroking her unpolished, neatly cut nails and keeping a protective grasp on any and all words departing from her lips, I knew after getting “I don’t know” and “I can’t answer that” to several questions, I was going to have to convert into my beloved girl detective if I was going to get any insights into who she was. Luckily I was already wearing Miss Drew’s chic, 1960s attire. Unbeknownst to Paquin, I would attempt to solve “The Case of a Cautious Actress.”

For having been in the public eye for 20 years, we don’t really know a lot about you.
I don’t know about that. There isn’t a lot of unchartered territory that hasn’t been covered or reported on or noted or observed.

Do you consider yourself mysterious?
Mysterious?

Well, private.
Sure. Not in some weird recluse way. I think it’s important to have things that are just for you and people that are closest to you. Some people share absolutely everything, but then what do you have left that’s yours? It diminishes what’s really special in your life.

Did you feel like you had to sacrifice some of the privacy you treasure in order to make a compelling statement for your Give a Damn PSA?
Absolutely not. I think it’s a really minor biographical detail. If you’re going to talk about some cause in a way that’s meaningful, you should identify why it means something to you.

Anna is featured on the cover of the October issue of In New York Magazine.

From In New York:

Like the two vampires who vie for her blood and affection on HBO’s True Blood (2008-present), Anna Paquin is eternally young, at least judging from the way she looks in her new movie, Margaret. That’s because the film—about a 17-year-old New York City high-school girl haunted by the thought that she may have inadvertently caused a fatal accident when an MTA bus hits a pedestrian—was filmed in 2005, shelved due to legal entanglements and recently released.

“I was reaching my expiration date to be plausibly playing a teenager,” says Paquin. “I was a very young-looking 23-year-old at the time. There’s something to be said for casting people who are the age of the person they’re portraying, but sometimes you can bring more to it by having life experience.”

Now 29 years old, Paquin was born Anna Helene Paquin in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada, on Jul. 24, 1982, to physical-education teacher Brian Paquin and English teacher Mary Paquin. She grew up in New Zealand, burst onto the scene playing Holly Hunter’s angry daughter in The Piano (1993) and, at 11, became the second youngest person ever to win an Academy Award. Two years later, her parents divorced, and she moved to Los Angeles, where she landed roles in Fly Away Home (1996), Jane Eyre (1996), Hurlyburly (1998) and A Walk on the Moon (1999), among other films.

After high-school graduation, she fulfilled a lifelong dream by moving to New York City and enrolling in Columbia University. “I visited here when I was 12 years old and decided I wanted to live here once I grew up,” she explains. “I went to Columbia and, well, I started doing a lot of theater. Philip Seymour Hoffman was directing an Off-Broadway play and I convinced him to hire me. I really enjoyed the hours and hours of rehearsal, discussing everything about every scene … One thing led to another, and six plays later, I hadn’t really gone back to school. I was getting a different kind of education.” Plus, she was building a résumé that included Off-Broadway plays and hit films, including Almost Famous (2000), X-Men (2000), 25th Hour (2002) and The Squid and the Whale (2005).

“I actually still had an apartment up on the Upper West Side, because I hadn’t quite made the complete commitment to not go back to school,” says Paquin, nostalgically recalling the period of her life when she was a local resident and was cast in the dramatic, filmed-on-location Margaret. “We did a lot of shooting on the Upper West Side and interior filming out in Queens,” she remembers. “I especially loved the East Village and the West Village. I used to say, ‘You’ll have to move my corpse to get me out of New York.’”

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