'Vampire Diaries' Actress Courtney Ford Joins 'True Blood' Cast

Looks like Courtney Ford is the latest actress to be bitten by the vampire bug. She recently appeared on "The Vampire Diaries" as Duke graduate student Vanessa, and now she's the latest actress to come on board for "True Blood"'s fourth season.

Just like on "The Vampire Diaries," Courtney will be playing a human character surrounded by vampires, but we're hoping her stint on "True Blood" lasts a bit longer. Deadline reports that she will be playing Portia Bellefleur, the stiff, lawyer sister of Detective Andy Bellefleur.

For those of you who have read the "Southern Vampire Mysteries" novels, you know that Portia's first appearance serves a very particular purpose in the Sookie-Bill romance.

Considering the two of them weren't on the best of terms when season three finished, we could see Alan Ball cooking up a very similar plotline for the television series.

As far as we know, Portia isn't an integral part of the witches plotline like "Harry Potter" star Fiona Shaw is, but Alan has a habit of manipulating the stories Charlaine Harris wrote for his own purposes.

Read more: MTV

True Blood at EyeCon Convention

Four cast members from True Blood are so far confirmed to be at the EyeCon “True Blood” Convention in Orlando, from Nov. 5 - 7.

These four are:
- Allan Hyde, who plays Godric

- Sam Trammell, who plays shape-shifting Sam Merlotte

- Kristin Bauer van Straten, who plays vampire Pam

- Joe Manganiello, who portrays werewolf Alcide


Read more:
EyeCon convention website.

Source:
Orlando Sentinel

New Blood for True Blood

The filming of season 4 starts next month, and True Blood are casting for new characters at the moment. Rumours say there will be 6 new characters, both humans and others.

Warning: The rest of the article may contain spoilers. Read at your own risk...

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True Blood cast: Ryan Kwanten

Ryan Kwanten (born 28 November 1976) is an Australian actor. He played Vinnie Patterson from 1997 to 2002 on the Australian soap-opera Home and Away. After his stint ended he joined the American teen-oriented drama Summerland portraying Jay Robertson. In 2008, he was cast as Jason Stackhouse in True Blood.

Kwanten was born in Sydney, New South Wales to Eddie Kwanten, a worker at NSW Maritime, and Kris, a lifeline op-shop coordinator. He is of Dutch ancestry on his father's side. Kwanten has two brothers, Mitchell, who is a musician and Lloyd, who is a doctor. He attended Catholic school.

Kwanten began acting on the television shows A Country Practice and Spellbinder. In 1997, he joined the cast of the Australian soap opera Home and Away, playing lifeguard Vinnie Patterson. He eventually chose to leave the series in 2002, shortly after his character married and became a father. Moving to the United States, Kwanten was cast as Jay Robertson in the Lori Loughlin-starring series Summerland, which ran from 2004 to 2005. He appeared in the films Flicka, with Maria Bello, Alison Lohman and Tim McGraw, and Dead Silence, a horror movie in which he played the leading role.

Kwanten made an appearance in a Law and Order: SVU episode that aired on 2 December 2008, in which he portrays US Marine Corps Master Sergeant Dominic Pruitt who is (falsely) accused of raping and murdering a fellow Marine and murdering her unborn baby.

In 2009, he starred in the film Don't Fade Away with Mischa Barton and Beau Bridges.

Kwanten currently plays the role of Jason Stackhouse in True Blood, an HBO television series based on Charlaine Harris' Southern Vampire Mysteries. He stars in the psychological thriller Red Hill, which was directed by Patrick Hughes. Kwanten earned one of the lead roles in the Joe Lynch Horror film The Knights of Badassdom.

» Ryan Kwanten posters, magazines and movies

Deborah Ann Woll and Joe Manganiello interviews

Backstage has interviews with Deborah Ann Woll and Joe Manganiello.

Deborah:
Getting “True Blood”: “It was a huge room with 10 to 15 [people] sitting in the room watching me,” Woll says. “So in a way it felt a little bit like an intimate theater space, and it was probably one of the most theatrical auditions I have done, because most auditions you’re sitting in a chair. But for this, I asked if I could be physical, and they said, ‘Sure, go ahead.’ I remember rolling on the floor because the first scene was this very traumatic ‘turning’ scene.” The only catch was that she did not have a great Southern accent in her arsenal and had only a couple days to come up with one before showing up on set. “Once I heard they wanted me back as a regular,” she says, “I spent the whole hiatus really working on it.”

Joe:
Sounds like a dream come true, but Manganiello found himself disillusioned by Hollywood: “It happened really fast and there were a lot of lessons to learn. I think actingwise, businesswise, I was ready to work, but I don’t think on a personal level I was mature enough to handle a lot of what came with that. So I kind of went away.” He took four years off and went to work in home construction. “I had to shovel literal tons of sand and gravel every day, mix cement, jackhammer, and do this really tough job,” he says. “Today I know that anything I do is better than shoveling.” He now takes a more “blue-collar” approach to the business: It’s all about the work and working as hard as he can.

» Read the full interview

True Blood Cast: Alexander Skarsgård

Alexander Johan Hjalmar Skarsgård was born August 25, 1976 in Stockholm, Sweden. He is a Swedish actor, and best known for his roles as vampire Eric Northman on the HBO TV series True Blood and Brad Colbert in Generation Kill.

Alexander Skarsgård is the son of the famous Swedish actor Stellan Skarsgård, and has acted in several Swedish TV series and movies plus served in the Swedish coastal artillery.

Since 2005, with his performances in Revelations and The Last Drop, he has taken part in international productions. In 2007 he played one of the main characters, Sgt. Brad Colbert, in the American miniseries Generation Kill. He is an original member of the ensemble cast of HBO's television drama series True Blood. Skarsgård plays the role of Eric Northman, a 1,000 year old former Viking king, vampire sheriff of Area 5 and local bar owner in Shreveport, LA.

In 2009, Skarsgård appeared in the music video for pop singer Lady Gaga's "Paparazzi". As of 2010, he has three upcoming films in post-production: Metropia, Beyond the Pole, and Straw Dogs, co-starring Kate Bosworth and James Marsden. Straw Dogs is a remake of the 1971 movie of the same name. Filming began in August 2009 and has since wrapped. The film is set to be released in February 2011.

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True Blood Cast: Anna Paquin

Anna Helene Paquin was born July 24, 1982 in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada. She is a is a Canadian-born New Zealand actress.

Paquin's first critically successful film was The Piano, for which she won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress in 1994 at the age of 11 – the second youngest winner in history. Her acting career took off almost half a decade later when she appeared in a string of successful films including She's All That, Almost Famous and the X-Men franchise.

Paquin has received critical acclaim for her role as Sookie Stackhouse in the HBO series True Blood, for which she won the 2008 Golden Globe Award for Best Actress – Television Series Drama.

On August 5, 2009, it was announced that Paquin was engaged to her True Blood co-star Stephen Moyer, whom she had been dating since filming the series pilot in 2007. On August 21, 2010, Paquin and Moyer married at a private residence in Malibu, California. Through her marriage to Moyer, Paquin has a step-son, Billy, born in 2000, and a step-daughter, Lilac, born in 2002. Paquin and Moyer reside in Venice, Los Angeles.

On April 1, 2010, Paquin came out as bisexual in a public service announcement for the Give a Damn campaign as part of the True Colors Fund, an advocacy group organized by Cyndi Lauper dedicated to LGBT equality.

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