PASADENA, Calif. _ Actress Anna Paquin was shy as a little girl. She still is. That may seem surprising, as Paquin was only 11 when she earned the Academy Award for her performance in "The Piano," making her the second youngest to ever win that honor.
But she says she didn't even realize she liked acting until a few years later. "I'd done one movie, won an Oscar, and people kept offering me stuff, so I worked a little bit."
"And by the time I was 15, I was starting to understand that there was more to it than showing up, and actually it was kind of fun, that it was _ without sounding pretentious _ a craft, that it was something that you could be good at or work at," says Paquin.
"Also developmentally 15, 16 is when kids start to become more focused on whatever it is they're interested in," she adds. "Mine just happened to be a public career. You're constantly in a state of transition (as a teenager), so getting to step out of your own life is pretty pleasant."
While she was born in Canada, her parents moved to New Zealand when she was 4 and it was there she was unexpectedly cast in "The Piano."
"My parents are teachers and were very protective of me and wanted to make sure I was taken care of, had my education. And if this (acting) didn't interfere with that, that was fine," says Paquin.
"It worked out. I think, from my parents' perspective, is shutting this door forever really the right thing to do, when clearly it's something that our child has an ability in and has this opportunity? And more _ the weighing of _ do we just take it very slowly and carefully or do we shut it down completely? I think the consensus was to allow it as long as it didn't seem to be doing any harm until it became something that was very much driven by me. And then, good luck trying to shut it down. I was 15 or 16."
The veteran of projects like "True Blood," "The Affair," "Amistad" and four "X-Men" movies, Paquin, 36, knows the ropes. She admits it takes a thick skin to thrive in the entertainment industry. "You get criticized and rejected," she says.
"Not everyone is going to like every single thing you do, and you're not going to get every single job you want. I just feel really grateful that I get to play in the field I want to be in," she says.
The latest field she's playing in is Pop TV's "Flack," premiering Thursday. Paquin plays a steely but self-destructive publicist to the stars. The six-episode series follows her character as she negotiates the turbid waters of show business exploiting the facts she wants known and burying those she doesn't.
Paquin, who is married to her "True Blood" costar, Stephen Moyer, serves as executive producer with him on "Flack." They first read the script five years ago, she says. "I was in from the first scene. This is so my world as far as the dark and the funny and the drama. It was an immediate 'yes.' And we've been developing it for five years. So a year ago we said, 'Let's see if we can get this off the ground."
They share producing duties, she says. "Different responsibilities at different times depending on what needs doing," she shrugs. "We have two other producing partners too."
The pair are also the parents of 6-year-old twins, a boy and a girl. Paquin says she probably wouldn't permit her children to follow in her footsteps until they hit 18, but feels her childhood was vastly different from today's.
"I think the industry and the world have changed a lot since I was little. There was no internet, no social media, no this level of intensity of people having their privacy. I pretty much grew up normally and no one was following me around taking pictures of me going to and from school. It's a very different era now. I wouldn't be able to have the same control over the privacy factor that my parents were able to have."
ORIGINAL PROGRAMMING EXPLODES
If you feel overwhelmed by the multiple choices you have in television programming, you're not alone. With streaming sites proliferating like locusts in a cornfield, and the massive production of original programming (350 for Netflix alone last year), this really is the golden age of television.
John Landgraf, the CEO of FX and FX Productions, says we ain't seen nothin' yet. "I'm betting we'll see a more robust growth again this year and maybe next year because Netflix is spending more and more money, still adding to their already insane volume of output," he says.
"While HBO is also ramping up a bigger slate, along with whatever else the AT&T streaming platform does. Apple will enter the scripted series game this year. Amazon is still growing very aggressively. And we'll see new moves by others like Disney+, Hulu and the new streaming service just announced by Comcast," says Landgraf.
"The lines of demarcation that have been crystal clear for decades are now blurring. And over the next decade, I suspect an enduring new structure will emerge with only a handful of brands and streaming series dominating the scripted series business."
SAM NEILL HOSTS DOC SERIES
Why would actor Sam Neill take time off from his acting career to head up a six-part documentary series? "The Pacific: In the Wake of Capt. Cook," which is airing on Ovation, is part of his heritage, he says.
"Half of my family have been Pacific people, New Zealanders, for 150 years, 170 years, something like that," he says.
"The other half of my family has been there for thousands of years, the Polynesians, the Maori. So I wanted to explore the Pacific. I wanted to understand what Cook's arrival meant to indigenous people all over the Pacific. And I wanted to understand what it meant for us today ..."
Filming too him all over the world. "It was an extraordinary adventure. We went to Alaska, and the Aleutian Islands, British Columbia, Hawaii, where of course he met a very sticky end, and New Zealand, Australia, Fiji. I've swum with whales. I took a year off acting basically and went on this adventure," he says.
"I came away from the series with more admiration for Cook than I had before. He made these three epic voyages into the Pacific, into the unknown, as far as Europe was concerned. But I also came away with a greater admiration for the great Polynesian navigators who'd explored the Pacific ...
"This series is much about first contact, and the disastrous effects that that has had on indigenous people. The story is also about regeneration, and after the terrible destruction of, in particular, missionaries, the destruction of culture and language. How Polynesian and Pacific cultures are coming back, after 250, often catastrophic years.
ACTOR RECALLS A PURLOINED PINK SLIP
Richard Kind is one of the actors parodying documentaries on "Documentary Now," returning to IFC Wednesday. Kind, who's been in such projects as "Red Oaks," "I'm Dying Up Here" and "Gotham," remembers one project that proved unique. "I did a show called 'Luck' and Dustin Hoffman was gonna direct a movie in England, so the start date of the second season got pushed by quite a few months.
"So, we're waiting all that time. Finally, we start shooting months after, I mean like almost seven months after we should've been. It's the first day of shooting the very first episode of the second season. I had the last shot of the day, it was done as the sun was going down."
The scene called for him to drive a car into the parking lot of Santa Anita's race track. "I pull into a parking space, I'm listening to the radio. I turn the radio off, and I get out, and I shut the door. I did that about three times, banana, into the parking space. I turn it off. Yell, 'Cut!' and the first (assistant director) goes, 'That's a wrap on the day, on the episode, on the season, on the show.' The first day of our second season, 12 episodes, closed. I had the last shot. 'Turn it off.' And we turned it off."
It turned out that HBO shut down the show after three horses died during the production.
