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.