Middle Age Hollywood

The wild and otherworldly antics on True Blood are fraught with life and death, and undead scenarios amid an often-naked cast are just another day at the office for principal actors Anna Paquin and Stephen Moyer.

One might consider, with all that excitement, their off-screen relationship, presumably devoid of blood-drinking, vampire killing or supernatural sex, would seem comparably dull.

Not necessarily so. If you ask Moyer, 40, who appreciates the everyday minutia of life with his betrothed, even the milestone many men fear – meeting one’s future mother-in-law – was approached with enthusiasm.

“It was late last year,” he said. “I flew to Wellington to meet her mum for the first time. Without Anna.”

Grinning, he continues: “It was lovely, actually. I was picked up at the airport at nine in the morning, driven around for hours, introduced to all Anna’s friends and family. I had lunch with her mum, and then at four o’clock she stuck me back on the plane to go back to Auckland where I was filming [the upcoming adventure flick, Ice].”

Aside from the regular nerves and stresses one experiences when enduring scrutiny from future family members, another dimension is surely added when each of them have seen you near-naked, let alone conducting acts, albeit simulated, that are usually conducted in private.

He laughs. “You mean, you’re asking me if it was weird that Anna’s mum had obviously seen a lot of me before we met? Well, I don’t know. I didn’t ask Mary that.

“But you need to realise that she’s a very spunky, very modern, evolved woman. She’s very aware of what it is that we do and what it is that Anna does.

“Remember, she was with Anna was she was 14 or 15 and doing all those provocative movies like Hurly Burly and 25th Hour.”