TIFF<\/a> screening. <\/p>\n\n\tLike piano, acting was never something Liu envisioned herself doing. She was street cast while still a student at New York University, after which background and commercial work eventually turned into features. She has since become a festival mainstay with films like SXSW breakout Bottoms, where she stars opposite Ayo Edebiri, and Lurker, which premiered at this year\u2019s Sundance Film Festival before being snapped up by indie distributor du jour Mubi. Upcoming projects include the Mark Ruffalo TV series Hal & Harper and Michael Showalter\u2019s holiday comedy Oh. What. Fun. <\/p>\n
\n\tSeveral years after being inadvertently diverted into a profession, she is still happy to be pursuing an acting career. \u201cThere is always the question for myself, \u2018OK, do I want to keep doing this?\u2019 I do think it\u2019s an active choice. It\u2019s almost like being in a relationship \u2014 you actively choose to be with that person every day.\u201d <\/p>\n
\n\tWhen taking on Tuner, Liu was also drawn to the relationship Ruthie had with Harry, played by a delightful Hoffman. \u201cA person once told me, \u2018You have grandparent energy.\u2019 It\u2019s something about being comfortable and raised by or spending a lot of time with people from older generations,\u201d says Liu. <\/p>\n
\n\tThat includes Liu\u2019s own grandmother, who she says was the sole source of familial musical talent. \u201cMy grandmother wanted to be an opera singer, so growing up she was always singing around the house,\u201d Liu remembers. In the lead-up to filming Tuner, her grandmother died, with the actress finding some peace in playing Ruthie. \u201cThe character had an emotional fragility to her that I found very compelling and a good container for all of the complexity I was feeling about my own loss.\u201d (In the film, Ruthie says her piano was a gift from her late grandmother.) <\/p>\n
\n\tIt is notable \u2014 or, at the very least, coincidental \u2014 that Tuner isn\u2019t the end of Liu\u2019s onscreen musical career turn. Up next for the actress is Jesse Eisenberg\u2019s follow-up to his Oscar-winning A Real Pain, a musical comedy in which she will star opposite Julianne Moore and Paul Giamatti. Then there is Power Ballad, the latest from Once and Begin Again director John Carney. <\/p>\n
\n\t\u201cIn my own life, I have become extremely connected and appreciative of music in more recent years, so maybe that\u2019s a part of it,\u201d guesses Liu as to why she keeps being put into music-centric work. \u201cMaybe I\u2019m supposed to be a musician? What is the universe telling me?\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"It sounds like the kind of thing middle school nightmares are made of: being asked to play piano…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":137080,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[52],"tags":[88,2091,206,46686,84120,74767,56692],"class_list":["post-137079","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-movies","tag-entertainment","tag-international","tag-movies","tag-tiff","tag-tiff-2025","tag-toronto-2025","tag-toronto-international-film-festival"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/137079","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=137079"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/137079\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/137080"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=137079"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=137079"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=137079"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}