Anna Paquin

http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0001593/

When Blade came out and proved that a superhero movie not named Batman or Superman could make money, it opened the floodgates of the movie industry to want to try to secure properties that they could adapt into money making films. One of the more interesting things that occurred out of this was that the studios have done a great job of getting real talent to fill the roles of the characters. Everyone has done a dream casting where you cast movie stars as your favorite characters but it never really seemed possible. Why would real actors do these fantasy films?

When you look at the casting of the X-Men, the big pickups are the acquisition of Patrick Stewart and Ian McKellan. They give the films a certain amount of gravitas by signing on. Perhaps though, a pickup that was deliberately down-played was Anna Paquin. She was an Oscar-winning actress for her role in “The Piano”. I always thought it was odd that the pre-marketing blitz didn’t play her up more but I think they were holding it back in order to hide how important she would be to the plot. (It also could be because pointing out acting talent necessarily doesn’t get people to go see action movies.) Unfortunately for her and Rogue, Hugh Jackman as Wolverine ended up being the huge thing coming out the movie and the next two films primarily focus on him to the detriment of everyone else in the film. And then X-Men 3 killed the franchise and Wolverine has gone off to star in his own films.

Anna has gone on to become a huge TV star though with the success of “True Blood” which is capitalizing on the current vampire craze. Although I don’t watch the show, it’s good to see her having success.

Movies I've watched her in: Fly Away Home; She's All That; X-Men 1-3; Joan of Arc; Trick 'r Treat