I’m not entirely sure I’m fashionable,” says True Blood star Anna Paquin, her shrug audible. “I usually look kind of bummy. Like, I’m a jeans and T-shirt kinda gal.” Paquin, 26, may not be trend-setting. But the subject of her HBO show—set in a little Louisiana town where humans and vampires play—couldn’t be more in vogue.
“When we started doing the show, I hadn’t been paying attention—like, I didn’t know that Twilight and the whole trend was going to happen,” says Paquin, who latched onto the True Blood script as soon as she saw Six Feet Under creator Alan Ball’s name atop it. After a cult-favourite first season, the blood-lusty melodrama—based on the Southern Vampire novel series by Charlaine Harris—comes back to life June 14 on HBO Canada.
“But yeah, vampires are really hot. They’re usually portrayed as being beautiful and sexy.”
That, or evil and life-sucking. The trope of the vampire as misunderstood “other” is played with a heavy hand in True Blood (called so because it’s the name of a bottled synthetic-blood beverage that the undead drink—rather than guzzling from human jugulars). When Sookie Stackhouse, Paquin’s nervy bar waitress with telepathic powers, falls for a 173-year-old vampire, mayhem (and mad hot sex) ensues. But Paquin, blonde and pretty with extraordinarily mobile features, gives it brio and believability.
“The role was like nothing I’ve done,” says Winnipeg-born, New Zealand–raised Paquin, who won an Oscar at 11 for her performance in The Piano. You may also know her as Rogue, an X-Men mutant, or the coed seductress in 2005’s The Squid and the Whale. Later this year, she’ll play the lead role in the film Margaret, alongside Matt Damon and Mark Ruffalo.
“Usually, you get to play tough and scrappy, or you can be sweet and innocent, or you can be the sexy girl,” she explains. “You don’t usually get to be everything at once.”
As Sookie, Paquin’s all that in a “teeny-tiny T-shirt”—which all too often ends up bloodsoaked. “I generally wear a bit more clothes!” she says, laughing.
Does she ever: For big nights, Paquin, five-foot-five and slim, cleans up in Dolce & Gabbana, Narciso Rodriguez and Hervé L. Leroux—which she wore to pick up a Golden Globe for her performance in True Blood. She’s also a believer in method dressing—when she landed the part of Sookie, she went out and bought spaghetti-strap tanks and booty shorts to get into character. “It’s like when you have to wear a really high pair of heels and you spend a few hours practising in them, walking around on carpet to get used to the feel.”
Small in stature, long on talent—girl’s gonna need her Louboutins.
First published in FASHION Magazine June 2009
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Rachel writes:
Where can I buy Anna's dress (black one with ruffles featured in the print article)?
Thanks!
—posted May 28, 2009 at 10:57 a.m.
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