Havana Rose Liu has spent five years being the most alert person in other people's scenes. Tuner shows what that looks like when a script notices her; two other films from the same year show what happens when it does not.
Fi1m perspective
In Tuner (2026), Ruthie is written as the love interest of Leo Woodall's piano tuner and not a great deal else, and Havana Rose Liu declines to play it that way. She listens to Niki the way he listens to a lock, and their scenes come out as two adults working each other out rather than the romance a thriller feels obliged to include. We had the odd experience of wanting the film to leave its safes alone and go back to her, which is not what a supporting part is supposed to do to you. She is always thinking on screen, and the camera keeps catching her at it.
She came to acting sideways. A casting director spotted her while she was still a student at NYU, and she did modelling and background work before Mayday (2021) gave her a first film part. No Exit (2022) handed her a lead in a thriller, and the notices for her were kinder than the notices for the film, which is a pattern that has held. Bottoms (2023) then put her in a very loud room: she is Isabel, who turns up at the self-defence club alongside Kaia Gerber's Brittany, and in a comedy built around Sennott and Edebiri shouting she is noticed anyway. The thrillers followed, Lurker (2025) and then Tuner.
What she brings is physical before it is verbal. She trained in dance and performance art, and it shows in how she stands, how she crosses a room, how little she does with her hands. For Tuner she learned the piano rather than fake it, and she has said the part "felt like an interesting container for a lot of the complexities of grief and drive that I had in that moment." Whatever she poured in, Ruthie has weight the script did not supply.
The same year gave her two more films and neither gave her anything to do. We found Nicolas Winding Refn's Her Private Hell (2026) close to unwatchable and John Carney's Power Ballad (2026) thinner than it thinks, and Liu registers in neither, which is the fairest thing we can say about the parts. A performer this watchful needs a director who is looking back. Roher was. Refn and Carney, on this evidence, were looking at other people.
The lead she had in No Exit has not come round again in anything we have reviewed. On the strength of Tuner, someone should hand her another, in a film prepared to keep its camera on her for longer than a subplot allows.
Biography
Havana Rose Liu is an American actress and model, also credited as Havana Liu. Born on 30 September 1997 in Brooklyn, New York City, she graduated from New York University with a BA in 2019 after studying the intersection of art, activism and wellness.
She began her career as a model after being scouted on the street and has appeared on the cover of Vogue Italia; she is represented by IMG Models. Liu made her feature acting debut in the 2021 film Mayday and is known for her role as Isabel in the 2023 comedy Bottoms. Subsequent credits include No Exit (2022), Afraid (2024), Lurker (2025) and Tuner (2026), in which she plays Ruthie.
