While attending the red-carpet premiere of their film A Bit of Light, costars turned couple Anna Paquin and Stephen Moyer celebrated the opportunity for a romantic evening out. “Well I can say Anna doesn’t look like this every day,” Moyer told People on Wednesday. “I’m very happy. This is a date night for us.” For her part, Paquin called Moyer, who directs her in the film, “my favorite person to play with” more than a decade after their first meeting on the set of HBO’s True Blood.
But Paquin, who walked with a cane during the premiere at New York City’s Crosby Street Hotel, also acknowledged that it had been a “difficult” two years. “It hasn’t been easy,” she told the publication of facing mobility and speech issues due to an undisclosed medical condition. A source told People that Paquin will hopefully make a full recovery from the health battle.
Requiring a cane to walk the red carpet didn’t dim Paquin’s excitement for her and Moyer’s latest collaboration, in which she stars as an alcoholic mother fighting to regain custody of her kids amid recovery. “My first love was independent filmmaking,” said Paquin, who won an Oscar at age 11 for her role in Jane Campion’s The Piano alongside Holly Hunter. “That’s how I entered the film industry. I was working with people who were all about telling stories and telling them with integrity and truth.”
When asked about the secret to maintaining both healthy romantic and creative partnerships, Paquin reflected on their meet-cute while playing Sookie and Bill on True Blood. “We like what we do and we met doing the thing that we like, so interspersing our work lives wasn’t ever going to be a weird thing because that’s [how] we met,” Paquin explained. “He knew exactly who I was for better or worse.” Moyer, who was a father of two when they met, added, “And I came with a lot of baggage and Anna took that on too,” to which she replied, “Not baggage. You have beautiful children.” In 2012, the pair welcomed their fraternal twins together—son Charlie and daughter Poppy, who are now 11.
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