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"I'm Anna Paquin. I'm bisexual and I give a damn,"  she says straight into the camera.

Watch Tell It to the Bees on GagaOOLala.

Paquin's debut performance in the film The Piano earned her the 1993 Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress at the age of 12, making her the second-youngest Oscar winner in history. She escaped the "young star curse", and has since then appeared in many TV shows and movies, with challenging roles that have made her an international star.


Scene from The Piano. (Photo Credit: JustWatch)

For her performance in the HBO series True Blood, Anna won the Golden Globe Award for Best Performance by an Actress in Television series. This series not only made her famous but also lead her to her true love: in 2010, Anna married her True Blood co-star Stephen Moyer. During that same year, Anna Paquin revealed she was bisexual as part of a video for "The Give a Damn Campaign", and dedicated to LGBTQ equality. Nearly 10 years later, Anna still gives a damn about inclusivity in the entertainment industry. She believes entertainment is one of the most powerful tools for bringing people out of their own bubble and their own world. She aims to raise diversity in Hollywood, but also keeping in mind how actors are forced out of the closet in the name of representation. She told the media: “This is the queer-is-human moment and I can’t wait any longer.” In 2018, Anna and British actor Holliday Grainger starred in the movie Tell It to the Bees, the story of a secret love set in a post-war Scottish town during the 1950s.


Scene from Tell It to the Bees.  (Photo Credit: GagaOOLala)

This was Anna ’s first lesbian role on the big screen, “Jean is adopted as a kid, leaves her hometown and comes back many years later. Later she falls in love with another "outsider" in town, a young single mother Lydia. For the role of Lydia, we will not put a label on her sexuality, she is somewhere between bisexual and heterosexual, this is the purest nature of love. The focus is on what their love brings to each other.“ This true and beautiful story is what Anna has been looking forward to for all these years. Recently, Anna's new series FLACK was also released. In it, she plays the a publicist who gets involved in a high-profile celebrity scandal. While showing off her performance skills in front of the screen, Anna also acted as the executive producer of the series, contributing with a unique creative perspective to the series. In an interview with American LGBTQ+ media "Pride Source", Anna said that the lead character’s hyper-controlling nature at work contrasting to her out-of-control family life fascinated her the most about the role. Anna thinks Robyn's bisexuality is a mere "footnote."


Scene from FLACK. (Photo Credit / IMDb)

Anna told the interviewer, "I love the fact that Robyn being bisexual just kind of casually drops in; it’s not a thing because it shouldn’t be a thing. And I feel like so many movies and shows, if they have characters who are leading anything other than heteronormative lives, it’s made into a big deal. It really shouldn’t be and isn’t.“ This interview also seems to explain why Anna would appreciate the role of the single mother Lydia in Tell It to the Beessince Lydia is not given any explicit sexual identity. 

Tell It to the Bees tells the story of Dr. Jean Markham who returns to her hometown in rural England after her father's death, taking over her father's responsibilities. Lydia is a single mother who is working in a factory to be able to raise her son Charlie independently. One day, after Charlie quarrels with some of his classmates, he accidentally walks into Jean’s office and becomes fascinated by Jean and her bees.


Scene from Tell It to the Bees. (Photo Credit: GagagOOLala)

The film examines the love and secrecy between the two women from the perspective of the boy Charlie, and explores the changes in the world. In Tell It to the Bees, Anna successfully plays the role of a lesbian who lives under the depressing and repressing atmosphere of the 1950s. The other actress in the film, Holliday Grainger, fills with tenderness and dramatic tension her role, which made the two them the best screen couple of the year at the Toronto Film Festival. 

Tell It to the Bees has received lots of great reviews at Queer Film Festival. If you still can’t forget about the delicate and affectionate love story in Carol, then you must give yourself a chance to experience the most romantic love story of this year, Tell It to the Bees.

Watch Tell It to the Bees on GagaOOLala.

Official trailer.

 

Leading Ladies reflects how guilt affects us in different ways based on our perspective or memories. A welcome dinner is the excuse to discover that we always keep a secret from who know us the best.