Anna Paquin

Anna Paquin is an actress born in Winnipeg, Manitoba (Canada) on July 24, 1982 to a Canadian father, Brian Paquin, and a New Zealand mother, Mary Brophy. She played the role of Amy Alden in the Fly Away Home motion picture.

Paquin's family moved to New Zealand when she was four. She auditioned on a whim with her sister for the role of Flora McGrath in Jane Campion's 1993 film The Piano and not only obtained the part but won an Academy Award for her performance at the age of eleven. An unplanned acting carreer had opened up for her and she moved to Los Angeles with her mother after her parents' divorce to pursue other acting projects.

Film credits include Franco Zeffirelli's Jane Eyre, A Walk on the Moon, Almost Famous, X-Men, Margaret and The Squid and the Whale.

Paquin has been married to actor Stephen Moyer since 2010 with whom she has two children, fraternal twins Charlie and Poppy born in 2012.

Fly Away Home producer John Veitch recalls casting Anna Paquin as the only actress they had in mind for the role of Amy Alden: "We all saw Anna at the Academy Awards and said she would be perfect for this. There was no other thought than Anna. We contacted her agent, met with her and that was it."

Amy Alden's early life strangely mirrors Paquin's since there was no definite script for the film and many of its elements were invented around and by the actors themselves who were given much freedom to improvise with dialogue.

Paquin was not present when the first goslings used for filming hatched, but her voice was recorded and played to the birds by Bill Lishman's daughter Carmen who stood in for the actress until she landed in Canada. When the goslings met her for the first time, they automatically accepted her as their mother.