Newly blonde and tanned, Kiwi actor Anna Paquin is vamping it up in LA - with vampires, that is.
The Oscar winner, who found critical acclaim early after her performance as a 9-year-old in The Piano, and big-time Hollywood fame as Rogue in the X-Men films, has madethe switch to the small screen, with new HBO series, True Blood.
She's pictured with co-star Stephen Moyer, who plays a 107-year-old vampire and Paquin's love interest in the series, which was created by Alan Ball of Six Feet Under fame. Ball has told interviewers he was surprised when the antipodean actor "actively lobbied" for the role of Sookie Stackhouse, a "mind-reading human waitress", with a Southern twang.
"I thought, 'Well, why would Anna want to do TV? She's got a movie career.' I'm used to American actors who have a movie career thinking television acting is beneath them."
Paquin's character has been described by reviewers of the series as a sultry reworking of Bram Stoker's virgin Mina Harkera in Dracula, "waiting to emerge as a minx".
The 26-year-old actor has told SciFi UK she was enjoying the extra male attention she was getting as a blonde: "Boys like to stare at blonde girls," she said. "Apparently, it's totally true. So it's amusing and quite lovely. Boys like blonde girls, who knew?"
She has also sung the praises of Ball for taking a chance on her.
"When he cast me, I was a pasty brunette from New Zealand, and now I'm a Southern blonde."
She and co-star Moyer looked close at the premiere, although Anna's love life is off-limits for interviewers, who have noted not a trace of her Kiwi accent remains.
"She falls for him and it's the first relationship she's ever been in and for the first time ever she can just relax," Paquin has said of her character. "But it's dangerous because he's a vampire and there's a lot of controversy surrounding that particular issue in their society.
"She instantly connects with him in a way that she's never been able to with anyone else.
"I think that's what everyone's looking for, to meet that person who makes you feel like you can just be yourself."
