First sightMusicThis 15-year-old Texan actor is tipped for big things after her lead role in a harrowing new film directed by David SchwimmerWho is she?
A 15-year-old actor from Texas who has a tough time of it in her first lead role.
How so?
She plays a rape victim groomed by an internet predator in Trust, directed by former Friends star David Schwimmer. The story is horribly plausible. A smart, suburban 14-year-old, Liberato meets a boy in an internet chatroom. He says she's cute. She thinks he's 16. I didn't want to freak you out, he explains a while later, but I'm a college student. Insidiously, his age creeps up and up. When they finally meet, she is face to face with a man pushing 40, a clean-cut dad in slacks and practised manipulator.
It sounds pretty harrowing.
Yes, but Schwimmer focuses more on the emotional fallout in her family than the rape itself – Clive Owen and Catherine Keener play shell-shocked parents. Schwimmer has been involved with an American rape charity for more than a decade, and spent seven years developing the story.
Isn't Liberato a bit young for the material?
She has been acting most of her life and is no stranger to adult themes – a few years ago she had a part in CSI Miami. American critics have been impressed by her maturity. Time magazine announced: "A 14-year-old star is born." Roger Ebert admired her "remarkable performance", praising the film as one of the year's best. Others have found it a bit issues-heavy.
What next?
Something completely different: a couple of action movies: The Expatriate with Aaron Eckhart, and Joel Schumacher's kidnap thriller, Trespass, opposite Nicole Kidman and Nicolas Cage.
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