The long game
Rome was not built in a day. Behind Liu's seemingly rapid rise lies a quieter, less visible story: years of patience, discipline and quiet preparation.
Fu Lulu, who joined Zhang Yimou's team as an assistant director in the early 2000s, recalls that Liu first caught Zhang's attention during the casting for Shadow, the 2018 martial arts film about a commander who secretly trains a look-alike to reclaim a city.
In an earlier interview with China Movie Channel, Zhang described his first impression of Liu: she was "like a piece of black-and-white paper", with eyes that seemed to speak. Although Liu did not get the part — she auditioned for a princess role — Zhang advised her not to rush into acting. Instead, he encouraged her to remain a "blank slate" and wait for the right opportunity.
Zhang later said her perseverance and instinct convinced him she had the qualities of a real actress.
So, she waited three years.
It was not until 2018, when preparations were being made for One Second, that Liu auditioned for Zhang again. Among more than 3,000 candidates, she won the role of Liu Gui'nyu, an orphaned teenager struggling to care for her younger brother.
In the film, she played a street girl with a dirt-smudged face who attempts to steal film reels, hoping to use the material as a lampshade. The role, which demanded both fragility and grit, became her screen debut and the starting point of her acting career.
"She works very hard and can endure a lot. She displays a lively quality. Everyone who meets her says she's smart and intuitive. She's got what it takes. When we were shooting One Second, I told her, 'Haocun, you were made for this.' I even joked that she might need to change careers (from being a dancer to an actress)," Zhang recalled in the television interview.
"Liu looks like a well-behaved, obedient kid, but she had to play a character almost like a little beggar, which was a huge contrast to her real self. On top of that, she was the only newcomer in the cast who had never studied acting. Yet, when she started her very first scene, the acting coach and I couldn't help glancing at each other — our eyes lit up. We both thought, 'How is this kid so talented?' She exceeded all our expectations," Fu recalls to China Daily.
Liu also remembers a moment from shooting One Second in the Dunhuang desert in Gansu province. For one scene, she needed to pick up a cabbage leaf to convey that her character was starving. Though the leaf was covered in sand, she bit into it without hesitation and did her best to make it seem delicious, a precious morsel her character could only dream of during the harsh years of the 1970s.
Through that unusual and physically demanding sequence, Liu says she suddenly understood what it meant to be an actor.
"I also understood why I would love acting for the rest of my life, taking it as part of who I am, a realization that became my quiet, lasting enlightenment."
She speaks those words with a seriousness in her eyes, not as a star enjoying the spotlight but as someone who has experienced years of hard work and uncertainty, and has come to understand that the stage is where she truly belongs.
