True Blood’s Anna Paquin Embraces More Horror in Her Latest Film

Anna Paquin has seen her share of gore playing Sookie Stackhouse on HBO‘s True Blood, and she’s certainly been covered in blood more times than we can count. In her new film, Kenneth Lonergan’s Margaret, Paquin isn’t fighting fairies or vampires or werewolves, but she is fighting something that can be even more terrifyingly vicious: herself. Paquin plays Lisa Cohen, a 17-year-old New York City high-school student who feels certain that she inadvertently played a role in a traffic accident that has claimed a woman’s life. Torn apart with frustration, she begins emotionally brutalizing her family, her friends, her teachers, and most of all, herself. In a poignant interview with HitFix, Paquin talks about the raw emotion that it took to bring Lisa to life.

At the time of filming, Paquin was 23, but the experience is still fresh and vivid in her mind. Six years may have passed (the film was held up due to a web of legal entanglement between the film’s director, financier and distributor), but the distance has provided the space necessary for her to try and find what was lovable in a girl who she admits is so often unlovable in the film:

“When you’re a little bit older than the character that you’re playing, it’s easier to be compassionate towards their less likable qualities. She’s gone through this horrible trauma and she takes it out on everyone around her in that way that people do. And she’s trying to make sense of what’s happened to her.”

The essence of Margaret is a kind of coming of age process, but not the kind you’d want to necessarily experience as a 17-year-old. The extreme nature of the accident forces Lisa to confront all aspects of her life, which propels her on roller coaster ride of emotions:

“She’s running around trying to accept responsibility, but she’s never actually able to say it until the final moment when nothing else she’s tried is working. ‘It’s my fault, I did something stupid and somebody died.’ That’s a huge part of who she is. Even though she’s wildly disillusioned by everyone around her, she finally accepts her part of it and she is somehow freed by the admission.”

The buzz going around is that Margaret has yielded one of the finest performances of Paquin’s career, but it’s still a question mark as to whether the film will get any recognition from Mr. Oscar. Lonergan admits that when it came to casting for Lisa, he already knew he wanted Paquin to play the part (Paquin had worked with Lonergan on a play when she was 19). For Paquin, the script still stands out as one of the best she’s ever read:

“I go to work to do good work, to make me feel good for reasons that have nothing to do with the end result. Maybe that’s from the luxury of having hit some so-called ‘high points’ in my career very young that I don’t think about it like that. But I don’t. There’s nothing better than coming home from work and feeling absolutely exhausted because you gave it everything that you had, that feeling of calmness, of having done great and exhausting work. Which ‘Margaret’ was every day.”

To read the interview in its entirety, please click here.

Source: HitFix – Interview: ‘True Blood’ star Anna Paquin on ‘Margaret,’ maturity and embracing the horror

Photo Credit: Fox Searchlight Pictures