Anna is among the great child actresses of recent decades. Born in Canada in 1982, her home since 4 years of age was New Zealand, giving rise to the uniquely enchanting accent. Throughout her teenage years she progressively lost her accent, and today it is regrettably rarely noticeable.

Her first movie, at the age of nine, was The Piano (follow the link for our review with screenshots and a video clip), which was a phenomenally strong start for an acting career, winning her an Oscar for Best Actress in a Supporting Role. Anna's decision to audition for The Piano was whimsical, having done no acting whatsoever prior to that. She's also not terribly appreciative of the award, saying she merely reacted to her co-star Holly Hunter, instead of doing "real" acting. Personally I like to think she got the Oscar for being a good fit for the role, and simply so likeable at that age.

After The Piano she turned down all movie offers for three years, because she and her parents didn't want that lifestyle for her. However during this time MCI Communications aired a series of commercials for which she had auditioned prior to being cast in The Piano.

Anna's next movie, three years later, was Jane Eyre (1996), an historical drama. The first twenty-five minutes comprise Anna's entire role of young Jane Eyre. Her acting is mediocre, but she's very much herself, and there are a good number of closeups, making it very enjoyable. The rest of the movie is a fine specimen of its genre. Unfortunately, the DVD (especially the PAL version) has poor picture quality.

Around this time, in the age of 12, Anna did reading for a CD "The Magnificent Nose". She reads four stories, totaling about 45 minutes. Anna makes no attempt to hide her lovely accent, as you can hear in the exerpt below.

Fly Away Home, where Anna is about thirteen, is a beautiful film, and on par with The Piano with respect to Anna's performance. Sadly, it's perhaps the last movie where she could be called a child.

In Amistad, Anna has only a very small role as the child Queen Isabelle II of Spain. It's otherwise a fairly good story about one of the turning points in the history of American slavery. This is possibly filmed before Fly Away Home.

In the made-for-TV movie The Member of the Wedding, Anna is cast in the lead role, sporting short hair and a questionable southern accent. This movie is more like a stage play, consisting mostly of discussions between Anna's character and her black servant woman. Unless you are a hard core fan of Anna or of historical stage plays, skip this movie. Available only on VHS.

Despite official release dates, A Walk on the Moon was probably filmed after Amistad. Anna is older, but has much of her child-like mannerisms left. She has about 15 minutes of decent quality screen time. The movie is otherwise rather ordinary marriage drama situated at a summer resort in 1969, with Anna's character dealing with her first period and boyfriend.

The next movie, Hurlyburly, made one year after The Member of the Wedding, is Anna's first adult role. Despite the the impressive cast (including Sean Penn, I Am Sam), I couldn't force myself to watch all of this movie, where Hollywood big names talk about their lives and mope. Anna plays a slutty teenager with a paltry ten minutes of screen time.

After that, Anna has been in a number of fine movies, including the X-Men series, and I've liked her in all the subsequent roles I've seen her in.

Below are the original files for the Flash videos above, as well as some variants and other files. These originals are naturally of at least marginally better quality, and are unaltered from the way we have found them.