Whatever Happened To True Blood Star Anna Paquin?

Born in Canada and raised in New Zealand, Anna Paquin made her acting debut in Jane Campion's 1993 film "The Piano," delivering a performance that earned her an Academy Award for best supporting actress at age 11 and made her the second-youngest winner in Oscar history. It's the sort of start that could easily lead to a "where do I go from here?" moment or, perhaps, even leaving Hollywood altogether. Paquin, on the other hand, is not one of the many former child stars who completely vanished from the limelight after they grew up.

From Charlotte Brontë adaptations ("Jane Eyre") to tales of rock 'n' roll journalism ("Almost Famous") and superhero epics (the "X-Men" franchise), moviegoers have watched Paquin grow up on the silver screen. However, it was her time as a TV series regular that expanded her recognition level exponentially and marked Paquin's stunning transformation as an actor. Starting in 2008, Paquin played Sookie Stackhouse on HBO's "True Blood" for seven seasons, interacting with vampires, werewolves, witches, shapeshifters, faeries, and the like. When the series came to a conclusion in 2014 after 80 episodes, she carried on with her career, but the majority of her subsequent projects have generally flown under the radar, comparatively speaking. Find out what happened to Paquin after she wrapped her work on "True Blood."

Anna Paquin and Stephen Moyer first crossed paths when they joined the cast of the HBO vampire drama "True Blood," which is based on the "Southern Vampire Mysteries" book series by Charlaine Harris. "We met doing the thing we love, on what was kind of objectively a dream gig," Paquin told Today in 2024. "Even if it had only been the pilot, you know what I mean, it was one of those that's just special from the get-go."

With Paquin playing waitress Sookie Stackhouse and Moyer playing vampire Bill Compton, the actors' characters were always destined to get together on-screen, but as it turned out, their chemistry quickly extended to their lives off-screen as well. In fact, let's say very quickly, because — as the only two out-of-towners on the "True Blood" pilot — they ended up staying at the same hotel, which led to them regularly sharing meals together. "It was just this ... I don't know, this magnetism," Moyer dished on "The Kelly Clarkson Show" in 2024. "And if you watch the show — like, those first few episodes when we're coming together — it's kind of off the charts." Before "True Blood" even premiered, Paquin had taken Moyer as her date to the Directors Guild of America Awards in January 2008, and by the end of summer 2009, they were engaged. Paquin and Moyer were married at a private home in Malibu on August 21, 2010. The former on-screen love interests have been together ever since.

When Anna Paquin and Stephen Moyer first started dating, Moyer was already a father of two, having had a son (Billy Moyer) and a daughter (Lilac Moyer) in 2000 and 2002, respectively, with actor-writer-director Lorien Haynes. In September 2012, he and Paquin became parents to a pair of fraternal twins: Charlie Moyer and Poppy Moyer, who — despite being born a few weeks early — entered the world in good health and made up for their early arrival in no time at all.

Paquin made a point of keeping her kids out of the limelight for as long as possible. As a result, the only photos of the twins during their childhood that Paquin's fans are likely to find were ones snapped by the paparazzi. "You won't find any pictures of my children," she told Today in 2018. "That's a choice we made very specifically. I want the right to say that they're not fair game." As it stands, neither Charlie nor Poppy have shown any interest in following in their parents' footsteps and becoming actors, but Paquin wouldn't stand in their way, she told People. "If opportunities came along to work with incredible people, would I say no on their behalf? Probably not. Look what I got to do — the people I've met along the way have been extraordinary."

The premise of Marvel's "X-Men: Days of Future Past," the fifth installment in the X-Men's ongoing cinematic adventures, provided the opportunity to utilize cast members from all of the previous films. This included the original trilogy ("X-Men," "X2: X-Men United," and "X-Men: The Last Stand"), as well as "X-Men: First Class," a period piece set during the 1960s. As such, Anna Paquin signed on to reprise her role as Rogue, but Paquin's busy schedule only allowed her to spend five days on the set. That said, when the film was released, fans would've thought that she'd only been there for about five minutes given that so little of her performance was utilized.

According to "X-Men" writer and producer Simon Kinberg, the problem was that they simply had too much story to tell. "Anna was fantastic in the movie, I liked the stuff we shot with her, but in a movie that had a ton of plot and a ton of mutants to service, the Rogue plot ... was a subplot," Kinberg told Yahoo U.K. "It was a deviation from the main story of the movie." Fortunately, those who'd been chomping at the bit to see more of Paquin's performance received that opportunity two years later with the home video release of the so-called "Rogue Cut," which added 17 minutes and changed the storyline so that Rogue played a much bigger part in the proceedings.

When it comes to the best TV miniseries of all time, there are precious few lists that don't include 1977's "Roots," which is based on Alex Haley's 1976 novel about the saga of an American family. Not only was it critically acclaimed, earning 37 Emmy nominations and nine Emmy wins, but the final episode still holds the record as the third highest-rated episode for any genre of television series. Given that it also spawned a sequel miniseries, "Roots: The Next Generations," and a TV movie, "Roots: The Christmas Gift" — not to mention the fact that the whole thing is a period piece — one might reasonably presume that there would never been a need for a remake, but ... one would be wrong.

In 2016, the History Channel released their remake of "Roots," and like the original version, this new take on the novel featured an all-star cast, one which included — you guessed it – Anna Paquin. While Paquin admitted that she found the prospect of remaking a classic miniseries to be intimidating, she was extremely pleased with the end result. "This is an extraordinary reworking of the original book and series," she told New Zealand's Stuff. "It is chillingly, amazingly good and upsetting, but beautifully done."

On June 12, 2016, a man named Omar Mateen shot and killed 49 people (and wounded 53) in a mass shooting at Pulse, a gay nightclub in Orlando, Florida. The horrific incident led to the Human Rights Campaign, the nation's largest LGBTQ+ civil rights organization, to team up with Ryan Murphy and Ned Martel, who both worked as writers and producers on "Glee." Together, they produced a tribute video to the victims of the shooting. To honor the 49 fatalities, Murphy and Martel pulled together 49 celebrities, each of whom would read the name, age, and story of a different individual who lost their life in the shooting. 

Given Murphy's high profile, it should come as no surprise that he was able to bring in some top-shelf talent, including — but in no way limited to — such notable names as Lady Gaga, Chris Pine, Cuba Gooding Jr., Jane Fonda, Rob Reiner, Kerry Washington, Demi Lovato, Jamie Lee Curtis, and Kathy Bates, as well as a plethora of "Glee" and "American Horror Story" cast members. Anna Paquin, who appears near the end of the 18-minute video, was selected to honor 36-year-old Eric Ivan Ortiz-Rivera, who — in a tragic turn of events — "did not frequent clubs like Pulse but followed a crowd of friends who had begun the night at a housewarming party." As of this writing, the video has been viewed more than 2.2 million times.

For her next proper series gig after the conclusion of "True Blood," Anna Paquin ventured into the Great White North to executive-produce and star in a crime drama for the CBC called "Bellevue." Co-created by Jane Maggs and Adrienne Mitchell, the series starred Paquin as Annie Ryder, a detective who is investigating the disappearance of transgender teen Jesse Sweetland from a small conservative town. 

Describing it as an "awesome lady cop role," Paquin told TV Insider, "I've always loved cop shows and I've always loved horror shows. I think it's just something about the exploration of darkness that appeals to me on some level, which I can't really explain. I'm almost an annoyingly law abiding person." Although "Bellevue" aired first on the CBC in 2017, it was acquired by WGN America for broadcast in the U.S. the following year. Unfortunately, the series was cancelled by the CBC upon the conclusion of its eighth episode, and while it was acknowledged that a second series had been in development in 2017, those plans ultimately failed to come to fruition.

Anna Paquin once again found herself landing on the CBC later in 2017, this time co-starring with Sarah Godon in an adaptation of Margaret Atwood's novel "Alias Grace." Gadon plays the titular character, Grace Marks, a woman who is either a cold-blooded murderer of two people, a woman suffering from a dissociative episode, or maybe just a complete innocent. The miniseries, a period piece set in Canada in the mid-1800s, is a true story based on a housekeeper who allegedly murdered her employer. 

"It's not a simplistic notion of good and bad and heroine and villain," director Mary Harron told Variety. "You will puzzle over it because when you think about the guilt or innocence, you will also think about the world they came from and what makes people do things and what turns women against each other, which is one of the key themes."

Paquin plays Nancy Montgomery, a housekeeper who helps Grace get a job after she's released from prison. "The whole story is creepy and terrifying," Paquin told Glamour. "We are conditioned to want to know what happened, but I love storytelling that doesn't actually wrap it up for you."

Given how well Anna Paquin and Stephen Moyer got along on "True Blood," it should come as no surprise that when the husband-and-wife duo had the opportunity to team up again, they jumped at the chance. In the case of 2018's "The Parting Glass," however, Paquin was in front of the camera and Moyer was behind it, directing his wife on the project. The couple's former "True Blood" co-star Denis O'Hare, a.k.a. vampire king Russell Edgington, not only penning the screenplay but also joining Paquin in the cast. It was a very personal project for O'Hare, as it was inspired by the suicide of his sister, and it's Paquin who plays his sister in the film's flashback scenes.

"I'm younger than Denis' sister was in real life, so age range-wise, I was never in the mix," Paquin said in an interview with RogerEbert.com. "I always thought that if I were the right age, I would've loved to have played Colleen. As we were getting closer to production, we honestly had not found who that actress was going to be. That's when the idea of me in the role started to feel like less and less of a stupid idea."

As for having her husband as a director, it was no sweat for Paquin. "He and I have such a shorthand, it's so easy," she told BUILD. "Plus, when people are like, 'Oh, was it hard to be directed by him?' I'm, like, 'My husband shot a sex scene that I had with Joe Manganiello one season on 'True Blood.' I don't think it gets weirder than that."

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After star Ruth Wilson left "The Affair," Anna Paquin joined the Showtime show for its final season. Playing Joanie Lockhart, the now-adult daughter of Alison Bailey (Wilson), virtually all of Paquin's scenes are set 30 years apart from the other series regulars, following Joanie as she seeks answers about her mother's death three decades earlier.

Paquin played things extremely close to the vest about her character's storyline throughout her promotional duties for the series, but she freely acknowledged that she'd already been a fan of "The Affair" before scoring the role, and she was particularly a fan of the work of series creator Sarah Treem. "She's a phenomenal talent," Paquin gushed to Entertainment Weekly. "I mean, it's an amazing cast and everyone else behind the camera who create this show are wonderful. TV making is very much a team sport, but Sarah is the rock star."

Critics seemed to enjoy it, too, if Vulture's take was any indication: "Paquin's portrayal of Joanie is enigmatic, but that seems deliberate. She's a woman who doesn't seem to know herself any better than we do, which means she fits in nicely with the rest of the troubled, un-self-aware souls on 'The Affair.'"

When an actor gets the opportunity to work with a legend, their general interest isn't in the size of the part but, rather, the mere chance to work with said legend. In the case of "The Irishman," Anna Paquin had the chance to play Robert De Niro's daughter in a film directed by Martin Scorsese, which is — as the saying goes — nice work if you can get it. Still, her character only speaks a grand total of seven words during the course of the three-hour-and-29-minute film, which is a small enough figure that Vice mentioned the number in the headline of their piece about Paquin.

Fortunately, the remainder of the headline clarifies that Paquin isn't annoyed by how few words Peggy Sheeran speaks onscreen. "I think sometimes a look is worth a thousand words and the internalized judgement that she has passed on her father is not something that she would be able to verbalize, not at that stage of her life," Paquin told the Daily Mail. "She'd need 20 years of therapy to be able to explain to him why he was a problematic parent."

Never one to rest on her laurels, Anna Paquin scarcely had time to take a breath in 2019, thanks to her decision to take on another new series, this one for the UK's W network, now known as U&W. Entitled "Flack," the premise of the series revolved around Robyn (Paquin), an American PR executive living in London and spending way too much of her time trying to help get her clients out of unenviable situations. 

"This is an extraordinarily dark and funny and twisted and smart show," Paquin told CBS Local. "It happens to have an amazing female-led cast and female ensemble. It was a character I loved from the get go and scripts I connected with immediately. It was a very easy yes."

"Flack" ran for two seasons on W, but it had a slightly bumpier run in the US, where it began on Pop TV, only to get bounced to Prime Video for its second season. Although the deal with Prime also provided the streaming service with the opportunity to do a third season, they failed to exercise that option.

When Anna Paquin and Stephen Moyer took to the red carpet in April 2024 in support of their most recent collaboration, "A Bit of Light," in which Paquin was once again directed by Moyer, Paquin walked the carpet with the aid of a cane. The actor has not shared the specific reason why she has begun using a cane, but she has said that she has been dealing with mobility issues for a few years. "It hasn't been easy," she admitted to People, also acknowledging that she'd been dealing with some speech issues as well.

After she appeared at the event with a cane, Paquin did sit down with "Entertainment Tonight" and address the public's overwhelming concern. "I am extraordinarily touched and moved by people showing that they care and being interested and kind about it," said Paquin. "At some point I will probably elaborate on my own platform in my own words. I'm just really grateful for the support." That same week, Paquin told "Today" hosts Hoda Kotb and Jenna Bush Hager that some days are better than others, but left it at that. "I'll probably talk about that at some point," she said.

Paquin has remained notably quiet about her health in the interim, however, and she's also been laying low in terms of new projects, with the aforementioned "A Bit of Light," which is still her most recent on-camera appearance as of October 2025.