After 27 years in the movies, the X-Men and True Blood star is sick of having to work extra hard and be extra nice simply because she is a woman

Anna Paquin is supposed to be having a day off. She has been working for two weeks straight, with no break at the weekend, and she has six-year-old twins, a boy and a girl. “So I’m a wee bit tired. But good, really good,” she says. She is dipping into her free time to talk about her new TV series, Flack, because she is not only starring in it, but executive-producing it, too, and it is co-produced through her own company, Casm. She has spent five years trying to get it off the ground, in stops and starts, and they finished filming it just four days before we meet. Hence the tiredness? She nods. “It’s not a name-only credit. I’m a huge control freak. I’m involved in every single aspect of every single decision.”

In person, Paquin is brisk, earnest and articulate, and careful with her words. She was born in Canada in 1982, but grew up in New Zealand, then moved to the US as a teenager for work. She has been in front of the camera since she was nine, when she was cast in Jane Campion’s film The Piano. “I entered this industry in a very backwards sort of way,” she says. “I did one job, won an Oscar, and then people said: ‘Ooh, you have a career now.’” She points out, though, that there is a wealth of talented women in her age group, which means she will “still have to audition my arse off for stuff I really want”, but it does mean that she can generally work on things that she wants to. “I do have the luxury of being a little more choosy because of the circumstances of my career.”