Anna Paquin

An Oscar winner at the age of eleven for her performance in The Piano, Anna Paquin was the first New Zealander to receive the Best Supporting Actress honor and one of the youngest Oscar winners ever. Born July 24, 1982 in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada, Paquin was raised in Lower Hutt, New Zealand. After making her stage bow at the age of seven as a skunk in a school production, she decided to audition for the part of Holly Hunter's precocious daughter in Jane Campion's The Piano. One of 5000 applicants, Paquin--whose previous work was limited to TV commercials--won the role, and with both the success of the 1993 film and her Oscar win, entered the realm of international fame. Aside from a series of TV ads for a computer company, Paquin retreated from the limelight until 1996, when she emerged, now a teenager, in the acclaimed family drama Fly Away Home. That same year, she could be seen playing a younger version of the title character in Franco Zeffirelli's adaptation of Jane Eyre.

After playing Queen Isabella in Steven Spielberg's Amistad (1997), Paquin assumed her first adult role, portraying a teenage runaway presented as a "care package" to two Hollywood bottom feeders in Hurlyburly (1998). The following year, she stepped back into more wholesome coming-of-age territory, playing Diane Lane's daughter in the critically acclaimed A Walk on the Moon and taking advantage of the current teensploitation wave with a small role in the popular high school comedy She's All That. That same year, she appeared in the star-studded ensemble drama All the Rage, which premiered at the Toronto Film Festival. - Rebecca Flint Marx, All Movie Guide