Anna Paquin Hid Her Oscar at Home so Her Friends Wouldn’t Be Intimidated by Her
Actor and X-Men star Anna Paquin won an Academy Award at a very early age. But after receiving the coveted prize, she became a little self-conscious with the idea of being an Oscar-winner.
This ‘X-Men’ star tried to hide her Oscar from her friends
Halle Berry wasn’t the only Oscar-winner who was a part of Fox’s original X-Men franchise. Anna Paquin, who played the young mutant Rogue, also knew what it was like to win the trophy. She won a Best Supporting Actress Oscar for her role in the 1993 movie The Piano. She was only 11-years-old at the time, and perhaps what made her win more impressive was that it was her first feature film.
Paquin had no ambitions to be an actor at the time of her victory. She was only interested in the role because it meant she could take time off from school.
“I didn’t want to act. I went to an open call shoot for The Piano [because] I got to miss half a day of school,” Paquin once told Remind. “I didn’t have to go to school and I got a career. It’s what I’m most passionate about. I love what I do.”
So needless to say, winning an Oscar for her first movie came as a huge surprise for Paquin. It was also a new reality that took some time adjusting to.
“At the Academy Awards, when I won with The Piano, I was just confused that everyone knew who I was,” Paquin once said according to The Guardian. “I was just some kid from a small town in New Zealand. After I got the award – because my parents had set me up not to be disappointed if I didn’t win and didn’t explain what I should do if I did – I broke Oscar protocol by taking my trophy down the stairs and back to my seat. If you look back at the footage, you can see people trying to stop me, and I’m just walking away to sit back down with my mum.”
Some actors may be more than happy to show off their Oscar, but Paquin was different. She didn’t want her friends to think differently about her back in her school days, so she tried to hide her Oscar from plain sight.
“If it were out on a shelf, it would make my friends feel uncomfortable. I’m looking for friends, but people who put me on a pedestal,” she said according to Contact Music.
How Anna Paquin prepared for her first film role with very little training
Paquin didn’t have many acting classes under her belt when she starred in The Piano. According to the True Blood star, she and her family didn’t watch that much television, either. With such limited exposure to acting, Paquin had to kind of learn on the fly. She credited her Piano cast for setting an example she could follow that helped groom her acting abilities.
“When you’re sitting around watching Holly Hunter work every single day and you have no idea what you are doing, you say, ‘I’ll just kind of do what she does.’ I mean, that’s a pretty sweet role model to have,” she said. “I didn’t watch a lot of films or television. My parents were pretty conservative in that way. I would say that most of the people I consider to be role models were the people I worked with, and I happened to work with some of the most incredible people in my industry, so lucky me.”
Anna Paquin explained why she never felt fear as an actor
The fact that Paquin didn’t set out to be an actor might’ve been a good thing for the star. This made her oblivious to many of the pressures that child actors faced when trying to break into the film industry.
“I never felt fear as a child actor. I just didn’t know what the stakes were. I literally knew nothing about film and television because of my schooling. For me, it was just about being asked to do things, and I wanted to do them well,” she said.
