As the vehicle of Magneto's fiendish plot in the first X-Men movie, Paquin's Rogue character was kidnapped and spent much of the film screaming for help.

But for the sequel, X2, it's obvious that Rogue has more to do. She even has a romance with Bobby Drake, aka Iceman, with a kiss in the current promos that leaves frost on her breath.

"Clearly, my character has to go from being sort of frightened of everyone she encounters and has to evolve in some way," Paquin says. "So, yeah, in a lot of ways I do get to do a lot more stuff than I did in the last movie, but I'm not really sure how much I can say about that without getting into trouble.

"I think what's nice and interesting about the second movie that Rogue is in is that she's left behind a lot of the shy, timid sort of shutting everyone else out. Because she's been accepted into a group where she is not an outsider or going to be treated differently or poorly because of her mutant abilities.

"And so she is allowed to grow more and just get to do more stuff and be more part of the action. She doesn't need to be rescued. She's not the damsel in distress anymore. So it's kind of fun and there's a lot more actiony kind of stuff that I get to do - or stunts - which is fun. It's really great, actually, not having to be rescued for the whole movie."

Tom DeSanto, executive producer of both X-films, says Rogue definitely has a character arc building.

"So much of where that character is right now is because of where she started. The Rogue of the current comics is after the transformation," DeSanto says. "We're sort of going back to the roots of the character before her comfortableness with her sexuality and her sassiness.

"When Rogue was first brought into the X-Men, she was very timid. She couldn't touch anyone. It's not only a physical curse, but an emotional and psychological curse. Eventually, through time and her feeling of family and kinship, she was able to relax and let those self-imposed walls down that she had built up."

Paquin, 20, who won an Academy Award at age 13 for The Piano, says being part of the X-Men franchise was an easy choice.

"It's the X-Men, I mean, how could say no?" she says. "It's so fun and Bryan Singer and the cast and everything about it. How could I not want to do this movie? It's fun doing anything that's different. I like trying new things."

Paquin researched her character before the first film.

"I read many, many, many, many, many issues of X-Men," she says. "I tried to research thoroughly because I know that many people love this comic book.

"I know that people are watching closely and I hope we've come close to living up to people's expectations."

Paquin says she worked on the sequel for about six months "off and on" in Vancouver. She rented an apartment instead of staying at the local hotel where often film actors reside during shooting.

"I got to come back a few times," Paquin said of returning home during production. "I went to visit my mother for about three weeks in New Zealand for during one little down period. But for the most part, I was up in Vancouver."

Paquin says she is resuming her studies at Columbia University after about 18 months of acting work, including last winter's Spike Lee film, 25th Hour.

"Living on movie sets your whole life would make you really boring and a really strange person, if that was your only sort of outlook on life, because it's not really reality," she says.

"Also, it's just really nice after having sort of everything done for you and having people be way to overly nice to you to just go back to school, where you have to study and you can't make excuses. It's just normal life. That's sort of what I spent most of time doing, anyway, in between films."

X2 is in theaters on May 2.

Rob Allstetter, Deputy Sports Editor for The Detroit News, has been a comics journalist for the past decade, having written for numerous publications. He currently publishes The Comics Continuum. He can be reached at: RobAlls@aol.com