From Venice:
Anna Paquin is a true natural. At the age of nine she went to an open casting call near her home in New Zealand for an independent film called The Piano, and at 11 she won the Academy Award for Best Actress in a Supporting Role for a performance that no one saw coming. She was, quite simply, astonishing as Flora McGrath, who traveled with her mother (Holly Hunter) to the home of her new stepfather (Sam Neill) in the forests of New Zealand’s South Island. The depth and command she brought to her character in Jane Campion’s 1993 masterwork were rare for an actor of any age, much less a child, so it should come as no surprise that, 16 years later, Paquin is still keeping audiences under her spell. The veteran performer’s character, Sookie Stackhouse, on HBO’s high-tension, supernatural escapade, “True Blood,” has leapt into the thick of battle as the humans and vampires struggle for dominance in the fictional Louisiana town of Bon Temps, and beyond. On the surface, Sookie’s a waitress at the local watering hole, but beneath that she’s a warrior, a diplomat, a spy, a lover, and everything in between as she fights tooth and nail to protect what’s right and stay alive. Bill Compton (Stephen Moyer), her vampire beloved, has been kidnapped by werewolves and brought to the court of the power-hungry King of Mississippi (Denis O’Hare), and Sookie is forced to accept the help of the vicious yet alluring blood-drinker, Eric Northman (Alexander Skarsgard). Season three is at full throttle and the dance has begun.

Shortly after her Oscar triumph, Paquin took on the role of 14-year-old Amy Alden, who flew a flock of orphaned geese south across the Canadian border, in the moving, picturesque, and playful Fly Away Home (1996) with Jeff Daniels. She appeared as Queen Isabella in Steven Spielberg’s Amistad (1997) and as a mistreated drifter in Hurlyburly (1998) with Sean Penn and Kevin Spacey. It was in 2000 that Paquin, now a young woman, returned to the public eye in earnest as the outcast, insular Rogue in the superhero blockbuster, X-Men, with Hugh Jackman, Patrick Stewart, and Halle Berry, which spun into the sequels, X2 (2003) and X-Men: The Last Stand (2006). She played one of rock band Stillwater’s “Band Aids” (who were not groupies, they insisted) in Cameron Crowe’s ode to rock & roll journalism, Almost Famous (2000), and then inhabited student Claire Spence in Gus Van Sant’s Finding Forrester (2000). She also enjoyed her work with Scott Glenn in the little-seen Buffalo Soldiers (2001). (“He took it pretty seriously. I was slightly scared of him, which I love!” she laughs.) Paquin was in Spike Lee’s 25th Hour (2002) with Philip Seymour Hoffman and Edward Norton, and performed alongside Jeff Daniels once more in Noah Baumbach’s The Squid and the Whale (2005). And amid all of it, Paquin found time to spend a year at Columbia University.

As she continued her film work in the early 2000s, Paquin was also making a name for herself on the New York stage in such acclaimed productions as Rebecca Gilman’s “The Glory of Living” (2001) directed by Philip Seymour Hoffman, Paul Weitz’s “Roulette” (2004), and Neil LaBute’s “The Distance from Here” (2004) with Alison Pill and Melissa Leo. And in London, she performed in Kenneth Lonergan’s “This Is Our Youth” (2002) with Jake Gyllenhaal and Hayden Christensen.

In a marked departure from her purview of young adulthood, Paquin took on the title role in CBS and Hallmark Hall of Fame’s John Kent Harrison-directed “The Courageous Heart of Irena Sendler” (2009), the true story of a 29-year-old social worker who joined the Polish underground and saved 2,500 Jewish children from the Warsaw Ghetto during World War II and was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize decades later. Paquin took some time from the set of “True Blood” to appear in brother Andrew Paquin’s directorial debut, indie horror film Open House (2010), in which Stephen Moyer, Anna’s real-life fiancé was also featured. Slated for release this September is Galt Niederhoffer’s The Romantics, a portrait of a group of friends who reunite after college for the wedding of Lila (Paquin) and Tom (Josh Duhamel). Lila’s college roommate, Laura (Katie Holmes), feigns contentment as the maid of honor as she and Tom struggle with their own tumultuous romantic history together. Candice Bergen, Malin Akerman, Elijah Wood, and “Glee”’s Dianna Agron co-star.

Following her rooftop photoshoot, we walk with the Canada-born, New Zealand-raised thespian to a nearby Venice cafe. Having just wrapped season three and looking forward to a breather, she decompresses as we dig into a late breakfast. “Sometimes I feel like my food is just a vessel for me to use hot sauce,” she grins. We launch into the interview and are quickly struck by the Oscar- and Golden Globe-winning talent’s cheerful candor.

Venice: I’ve spoken with a few “True Blood” cast members and I’ve been really impressed. Is this just the nicest group of people to work with?

Anna Paquin:

I can’t think of a group of people that I would rather spend the next five years of my life with. It’s a wonderful ensemble in the truest sense, where everyone is equally important and necessary and it doesn’t work without the whole group. Every single part is filled with such interesting, wonderfully talented, great people. It’s a dream. Everyone’s so into it and we all feel so lucky to be there.

What did you think of the script when you first read it? ?

I read the cover letter that said “HBO” and “Alan Ball.” I was like, “Please! Yes! Thank you!” [laughs] Then I read it and I was like, “Okay, well they’re never going to cast me as blond and Southern.” So that was nice, but — never gonna happen. And I went in anyway as pale, dark, brooding girl and managed to convince them that it was a coloring issue, not an inability to do it. A lot of times people have no imagination when it comes to things like what you look like. As in, “Brunette girls are serious girls and blond girls are perky girls.” That sort of complete B.S. And thankfully Alan has an imagination — clearly! [laughs]

I thought it was funny and smart and twisted — which are all things I love in entertainment of any sort — and I couldn’t see what was coming next. I didn’t really know what to expect, and again, that’s something I love. The whole world that Charlaine Harris, who wrote the books, and Alan had adapted — I just loved all of it. It was something I’d never seen or thought of before, and that’s really exciting. And there were so many possibilities of where it could go. I feel like we could keep going for quite some time in this particular world before it would run out of weird shit. [laughs] That’s the whole thing with these genre shows, or films, is that anything is possible, and creatively that’s really exciting because it’s rooted in being about people and their relationships and their hardships and their emotional story, but when the plot points can be really out there, it’s more exciting — and it’s endless fun for us

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