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"  Here&amp;#039;s how we learned that Anna Paquin is expecting. She strolled onto the set of REDBOOK&amp;#039;s cover shoot, a vision in black from her loose tank top to her skinny-fit jeans. She waved hello, then disappeared into the dressing room. All business as usual. But within minutes, something was amiss. The just-turning-30 star of HBO&amp;#039;s vampire saga, True Blood, couldn&amp;#039;t seem to make a go of the short shorts and clingy tops we&amp;#039;d brought for her. How can that be, we wondered, when that&amp;#039;s exactly what her character, Sookie Stackhouse, wears in every scene of the show? There was a moment of dead quiet, until we got clued in that--yay!--she&amp;#039;s pregnant. There were smiles all around, then we reached for some roomier sundresses that fit over Anna&amp;#039;s slight baby bump. We ordered her some tea. Finally, she emerged. Success. She fixed us with her hypnotic mahogany eyes and posed like a pro, alternately splashing in a pool, stretching out on the grass, and leaning into our lens on a lawn chair. But the moment there was a break, she curled up on the side of the set. Morning sickness. Right after our shoot, Anna and her True Blood costar and husband of two years, Stephen Moyer, made their news official. But when we catch up with the actress a week later at a Venice Beach, CA, caf\u00E9 near her home, she&amp;#039;s allergic to baby talk. Is she feeling tired? &amp;quot;I think at this point in the season, everybody is ready to take a really long nap,&amp;quot; she says, referring to the show&amp;#039;s grueling 12-hour schedule. Still, not everyone on set is pregnant. &amp;quot;That&amp;#039;s true,&amp;quot; she lets out. &amp;quot;I&amp;#039;m fine. I honestly don&amp;#039;t know why it&amp;#039;s such big news when an actress gets pregnant.&amp;quot; In fact, Anna seems a little nervous, as if talking too much might jinx her happiness. &amp;quot;Obviously, we&amp;#039;re incredibly excited,&amp;quot; she says. &amp;quot;But we&amp;#039;re still feeling a little protective of the whole thing. Something could happen, you know?&amp;quot; In a world of reality stars who are too happy to flaunt their baby bumps and hawk nursery pictures to the highest bidder, Anna&amp;#039;s reserve is refreshing. Just add it to the list of ways she bucks the Hollywood norm: There&amp;#039;s that trademark gap in her teeth. Her skin is proudly pale. (&amp;quot;I&amp;#039;m the color of that napkin,&amp;quot; she says, explaining why she and Stephen never go to the beach.) Her dark roots betray the fact that she&amp;#039;s no California girl. &amp;quot;For the first month or so, I&amp;#039;d wake up and see blonde hair on my shoulder,&amp;quot; she says of her decision to dye her hair for the show, &amp;quot;and it kind of freaked me out.&amp;quot; Indeed, no one seems more surprised at her current bombshell status than Anna herself. It&amp;#039;s as if the swan can&amp;#039;t quite believe she&amp;#039;s no longer the duckling. As her True Blood costar Joe Manganiello puts it, &amp;quot;She reminds me of the girl in high school who wore the Doc Martens and listened to alternative music.&amp;quot; And that&amp;#039;s exactly her charm. ANNA&amp;#039;S CHARACTER, SOOKIE, THE SWEET-NATURED diner waitress with psychic abilities and a soft spot for the undead, has become a certified pop-culture icon. She is the subject of a viral video from Snoop Dogg, helped inspire a True Blood makeup line from Tarte, and fuels blogs with names like Sookieverse and Sookie Says. And she must be the reason Sookie was one of the fastest-rising baby names in 2010. Who would have thunk a fang-banger (the show&amp;#039;s term for people who lust after vampires) who&amp;#039;s had sex in a graveyard would hit such a nerve with perfectly normal women across America? In many ways, casting the introverted Anna in the role of a hot-blooded ingenue was a stroke of genius, though she may have been the last to realize it. &amp;quot;I didn&amp;#039;t honestly believe it was going to happen,&amp;quot; she says of her audition. &amp;quot;If someone doesn&amp;#039;t walk in the room looking the way a character is described on the page, a lot of people can&amp;#039;t see it.&amp;quot; It&amp;#039;s true that Anna hadn&amp;#039;t exactly carved out a career that telegraphed &amp;quot;smokin&amp;#039; hot TV blonde,&amp;quot; but her quirkiness is exactly what seduced HBO, and audiences. She burst onto our collective radar at age 11, winning an Oscar for The Piano. (Anna only watched the 1993 film for the first time a few years ago. Her takeaway? &amp;quot;Did I really need to see Holly [Hunter] doing it with Harvey Keitel? Um, I could have lived without that.&amp;quot;) After her odds-defying start, the Canadian-born, New Zealand--raised teachers&amp;#039; daughter moved from set to set with her family. But always being the new girl at school took a toll. &amp;quot;I was painfully shy,&amp;quot; she says. &amp;quot;I found it paralyzing to talk to new people.&amp;quot; Instead of going for teen fare, she chose parts in edgy movies like Almost Famous and A Walk on the Moon, eventually landing the role of mutant Rogue in three X-Men films, which established her as a sci-fi heartthrob. &amp;quot;Honestly, I usually get cast in interesting roles where being aesthetically pleasing is a bonus--not as the bombshell girlfriend who doesn&amp;#039;t get to do much,&amp;quot; she says with disarming candor. &amp;quot;It&amp;#039;s weird, because now I can&amp;#039;t imagine another Sookie,&amp;quot; says TB creator Alan Ball. &amp;quot;At the time [Anna read for the part], she was pale, brunette, and kind of Gothy. But she understood the weirdness of the role.&amp;quot;  SOOKIE&amp;#039;S EXTROVERT SIDE CHALLENGED ANNA, so she replaced her smirk with a smile and hit the streets as initiation. &amp;quot;I&amp;#039;m a big believer in &amp;#039;fake it to make it,&amp;#039;&amp;quot; she says. &amp;quot;I went out and bought some incredibly short shorts and a push-up bra that I knew were going to be a part of my new life. It&amp;#039;s not that I&amp;#039;m a prude, but I&amp;#039;m not a massive exhibitionist, either.&amp;quot; You wouldn&amp;#039;t know it now. Shooting sex scenes with her husband may come naturally, but what about when Anna has to cavort in flagrante delicto with costar Alexander Skarsgard, who plays her other vampire lover, Eric? &amp;quot;We feel completely comfortable together,&amp;quot; she says matter-of-factly. &amp;quot;Steve and Alex are buddies. It&amp;#039;s nothing like, &amp;#039;Oh, hi, nice to meet you. Now let&amp;#039;s take off our clothes and go into the fog.&amp;#039; Everyone is very respectful of each other&amp;#039;s boundaries... They&amp;#039;re all very gentlemanly about it.&amp;quot; We&amp;#039;re not sure we&amp;#039;d call the sex on the show gentlemanly--in one scene, Moyer&amp;#039;s character, Bill, has his way with his &amp;quot;maker,&amp;quot; Lorena, while twisting her head 180 degrees. But it&amp;#039;s clear that Anna considers it just another day at work. &amp;quot;We had read the books,&amp;quot; she says of the series&amp;#039; graphic content. &amp;quot;We knew what we were getting into.&amp;quot; And obviously, she has no regrets. &amp;quot;She&amp;#039;s made such a total transformation,&amp;quot; adds Ball, though Anna says she still doesn&amp;#039;t feel like a sex symbol. &amp;quot;To me, what&amp;#039;s appealing about Sookie is that she&amp;#039;s quite ordinary,&amp;quot; she says. &amp;quot;She&amp;#039;s the girl next door. The fact that I&amp;#039;m not some 5-foot-11-inch Amazon goddess makes me more easy to relate to.&amp;quot; Playing Sookie may also have led Anna to some personal epiphanies--she declared she was bisexual in a public-service campaign called &amp;quot;Give a Damn&amp;quot; before tying the knot with Moyer. &amp;quot;I&amp;#039;m a pretty straightforward person,&amp;quot; she says, when asked if she&amp;#039;s always been so outspoken. &amp;quot;I&amp;#039;m not the friend you&amp;#039;re going to ask, &amp;#039;Do you like my outfit?&amp;#039; if you don&amp;#039;t potentially want to hear, &amp;#039;Not really.&amp;#039;&amp;quot; She&amp;#039;s brutally honesty with herself, too. &amp;quot;I&amp;#039;m my harshest critic,&amp;quot; she says. &amp;quot;But at a certain point, you need to embrace who you are and the whole package that comes along with it. For me, it was cutting myself some slack and not trying to be something that I think is perfect or ideal.&amp;quot; Not surprisingly, the instant she learned to accept herself, Anna also found love--right beside her. &amp;quot;I&amp;#039;m not sure why people are shocked when actors end up with each other,&amp;quot; says Anna of Moyer, who is 12 years her senior and has two children. &amp;quot;They do chemistry reads between actors to make sure they&amp;#039;re going to play out well opposite each other.&amp;quot; The two started dating publicly in 2009 and wed in 2010. To Ball, the sparks between the two were &amp;quot;completely obvious.&amp;quot; But her costars were more surprised. &amp;quot;We didn&amp;#039;t know it was going on until it was out in the open,&amp;quot; says Anna&amp;#039;s close friend Rutina Wesley, who plays Tara Thornton. &amp;quot;But then I was like, &amp;#039;A-ha! It all makes sense now...&amp;#039; It&amp;#039;s adorable to see them steal away for a minute on the set or just gaze into each other&amp;#039;s eyes.&amp;quot; Paquin is typically low-key about her marriage, but she can&amp;#039;t help blushing and smiling when she talks of Moyer, both as a real person and as her undead TV soul mate. &amp;quot;One of the beautiful things about love is that it can wake up parts of a person, even in a 183-year-old vampire, that have been pushed away,&amp;quot; she says, adding that offscreen, the couple has a pretty limited nightlife. After her vagabond childhood, Anna is enjoying a schedule that doesn&amp;#039;t demand months far away from home and allows her to work with her husband. &amp;quot;I was really craving a bit of consistency,&amp;quot; she says of her attraction to the show. &amp;quot;Granted, True Blood is not exactly normal, but it&amp;#039;s about as normal as I ever want to be. My normal always falls a little left of center.&amp;quot; As for domesticity, Paquin says, bring it on. &amp;quot;I love being married. We&amp;#039;re super-geeks who will happily spend an entire hour online looking for the perfect lamp.&amp;quot; She says that she and Stephen have developed a natural give-and-take and can compromise on almost everything--almost. &amp;quot;Steve won&amp;#039;t watch horror movies with me. He finds them scary,&amp;quot; says Anna. She shakes her head and flashes her sparkly, imperfect grin. &amp;quot;He plays a vampire. I&amp;#039;m like, &amp;#039;Babe, what did you do at work today?&amp;#039;&amp;quot; "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.redbookmag.com/life/interviews/a14135/anna-paquin-pregnancy-true-blood-interview/?click=rbk_more>