Anna Paquin - True Blood - Hot seat

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First published on 10 Sep 2009. Updated on 18 Aug 2010.

Still remembered for scoring an Academy Award at age 11 for The Piano, Anna Paquin has since managed to lie low, avoiding the usual trail of scandal and paparazzi. These days, as True Blood's telepathic waitress Sookie Stackhouse, the 26-year-old Kiwi actress is up to her fingernails in fake blood (and fake IDs).

You slept through our original interview time. Is that blood-sucker method acting?
We shot nights for two consecutive weeks. We're on vampire hours. I don't party. I'm not that cool.

Never?
It's not like I've never partied. As soon as you don't need a fake ID, it kind of loses its appeal.

You had a fake ID?
'Course I did. I look like I'm 12! Especially when I was in college. A couple of occasions I had a bouncer look at it and go, no, you're not so-and-so. If I tried to say yes, I am, they'd go, "No, you're not, you're Anna Paquin!" Like, they'll know because my movie is playing across the street. They'd be like, "this is the worst fake ID I've ever seen, go away."

And now that you're legal?
I look forward to sleeping on the weekends. I do occasionally get my nails done on the weekend, but usually because there's some miscellaneous vampire-related crap that ended up under them.

Blood? Dirt? The skin of your on-screen lover and off-screen fiancé Stephen Moyer?
Miscellaneous. Mysterious. The cuter the outfit, the more you're about to get really messy in it on set. There's eye blood, there's mouth blood, there's congealed blood, there's liquid blood, there's old blood, there's crusty old blood.

What's the hardest kind of blood to get out in the laundry?
There was a time last night that they dumped an entire pureed vampire - it was fake - on top of me. It does sort of stain your skin a bit. Fun fact, completely useless: the old-school shaving foam, like Barbasol, is the only thing that gets it out of your skin. It opens up the hair follicles, your pores. It does it for colour or, well, debris - you take a nice shower in head-to-toe shaving foam. Aren't you glad you know that? But that's just fake blood. No promises for real blood.

On the vampire undead scale spanning Nosferatu to Twilight and taking in Buffy the Vampire Slayer and The Lost Boys, where does True Blood fall?
I haven't really read Twilight. But it's all about the temptation and not the follow-through, right? Our show is Sookie and Vampire Bill doing it in the graveyard. These are all grown-ups having consensual vampire relations. It's grown-up kink.

Sookie's love for Bill earns her a lot of enemies, including her brother [played by Sydney boy Ryan Kwanten]. What price does she pay?
She's like the kid who is, like, really good at something, so she isn't the most popular person in the class.

You were really good at something as a kid, winning an Oscar at age 11.
Is this therapy? Should I go lay down on the couch? I think you have a better likelihood of getting me to snore than getting me to open up. [Laughs] There's nothing as annoying as listening to an actor complain about how hard my life was because I was an actor. You gotta just keep your mouth shut.

What's the trick to soul-shivering screams, like the one that ended last season when you discovered the dead body in the car park at Merlotte's?
You just scream. Loud. Have older siblings. I'm the youngest, so you scream loud or no one will come and intervene. My older brother stuffed me inside a cello case once. Zipped it up.

No wonder you moved thousands of miles from New Zealand.
No, the cello-case-putter-inner lives in Los Angeles... with his cello case. I, uh, love him. [Laughs]

True Blood Season 3 premieres on Showcase on Thu 19 Aug, 8.30pm. True Blood Seasons 1& 2 are on DVD through Warner Home Video.