When you're 12 and you do a family movie about geese
and then you're like 14 by the time the movie comes out
and people just make fun of you at school because
you're making weird noises at geese,
it takes a little bit of the fondness away from it
'cause then you're just an awkward teenager.
Hi, I am Anna Paquin.
I play Peggy Sheeran in The Irishman,
and we're talking about my favorite roles.
(upbeat music)
It's always funny because the things
that people know you for or have had the biggest impact
are usually not the ones that, kind of,
were the personal growth ones.
They did open casting calls for The Piano
because they were shooting in New Zealand
and you know, you cast the kid local
'cause it's easier and cheaper,
(chuckling)
and I stumbled into it with some friends
and then it turned out I had a career.
We did a film adaptation of the play Hurly Burly.
A whole bunch of really crazy heavy hitters
and I was just this kid, and that was sort of
the first grown-up grown-up movie I ever really did
and pretty much just spent most of the time
trying not to sound like I was a child
and like I had no idea what I was doing,
but was again one of those eye-opening,
crazy, intense, cool experiences that I'll never forget.
It was a beautiful summer up in the mountains in Quebec and
a lot of the stuff happening to my character
was sort of very synced up age-wise with
things I was going through in real life,
so in some ways intensely awkward,
where you're like, oh cool, my adolescence is captured
in all of its awkwardness on camera,
but also I have a lot of fondness for it.
I'm not a huge rom-com gal,
like my taste skews a little darker,
so when people are like, what's your comfort viewing,
I'm like, not the happy stuff.
So, I'm maybe a little more like the actual character
I played in that who was like this sort of
slightly goth, rebel baby sister.
25th Hour was pretty cool, Spike Lee.
Sadly, the last time I got to work
with my very dear friend Phil Hoffman
who directed the first play I ever did,
and I think kind of taught me
how to be an actor as an adult.
That was on so many levels just an amazing experience.
Just really fun and tongue-in-cheek,
and Mike Dougherty, who wrote a bunch of the X-Men movies
is a very dear friend of mine and he wrote and directed that
and it was just one of those things where
it was just wild and crazy and dark and totally messed up
and just so much fun, like so so much fun.
So I did this TV show and I met this dude,
and now like 12 years later we're married
and we have a bunch of kids and stuff,
so pretty life-changing.
The Kenny Lonergan movie, Margaret, that I did when I was 23
was pretty much one of the most
professionally intense and gratifying
and amazing experiences.
His words are just like none other
and he and I just were so creatively in sync.
Like, three people saw the film
but it's definitely up there in the
life-changing professional experiences.
That was a very personal and heartfelt film
for Denis O'Hare who wrote it and who was the star in it
about his sister's suicide and was
an absolute labor of love.
It's just been released on streaming platforms
so it's now actually available to be seen
and it's one of those ones that's tough subject matter
but I think really important as far as
opening up conversations about mental health and all of that
that is just hard to talk about,
hard to watch but is really important
and he did a beautiful job.
I mean, Peggy sees Frank for who he really is.
Sometimes, the people who reflect your own truth
are the hardest people to be around
and the people whose approval you seek the most
and who you may never ever get that from
and everyone else kinda buys into his
fabulous perks of the lifestyle and she doesn't.
And it's a really interesting role
in relation to his character and she sees him
for who he really is and that is very challenging for him
and he never actually resolves it.
(rhythmic drumming)
Thanks for watching.
The Irishman is now on Netflix.