Despite being a less than average person himself, Adam Crane was determined to make sure his family was able to live a normal life. Being one of CNN's top newscasters was hardly a rock star's existence, but it did afford a certain amount of recognition - an unneeded distraction when he was trying to spend the little free time he did have with his wife and children. The opportunity to brush elbows at work family events with the people who graced their TV every evening (and in rarer cases, even the occasional Hollywood personality) did offer an appealing glance at the world of celebrity to his three kids, but for Talia, his middle child, there was no battle to be had over why he couldn't use his connections to help make her the next Disney star. Pleasant but introverted, she flew under the radar socially and made it to high school a complete nonentity: not popular, but not bullied; not a teacher's pet, but not a total burnout. She took a minimal course load, just enough to get her graduated and accepted to a decent university while leaving adequate time for her to focus on what she really cared about: music. A passion that started with the cello and clarinet in elementary school had picked up momentum as she taught herself new instruments and began composing her own music. Though she rarely performed in public, by high school she had repurposed her basement into a makeshift recording studio and was working on recording demo tracks of her songs - not for anyone else to hear, she insisted, just to help her improve.
Yeah, that worked out.
At the encouragement of a friend, Talia self-released her first single on her personal website in 2003, where it made about as much of a splash as expected, that being very little at all, beyond it making the quick rounds among her classmates on MySpace. But the internet was a funny place, and information traveled in ways it hadn't before. Despite a complete lack of promotion on her part, her single eventually landed in the hand of Casablanca Records, who, be it because they genuinely liked it or just thought that the daughter of an already known name would surely be easy enough to polish up into something producible, contacted her to discuss signing her for a record deal. One album, a tour opening for Jesse McCartney, and a questionable music video that mostly involved her mean mugging like a poor man's Avril Lavigne later, she had secured herself a short-lived space among the teen queens of pseudo-punk pop, cracking the Billboard 2005 chart with her single "She Said" (which topped out at #31) despite selling only 4000 copies of her album in the United States.
A segue into acting was not a choice Talia would have come to on her own; though going on tour and releasing her music video had been a trial by fire in the art of faking charisma, it wasn't something she felt confident enough in to even think of pursuing. But with the new generation of emerging teen musician-actress-humanitarian-astronaut-you name it hybrids proving you really could do it all, her team pushed her to at least consider taking on a few auditions. She'd done better in front of a camera before than any of them had expected, frankly, and besides, with her album not doing as well as they had hoped, it was really the only chance she had at staying relevant. The decision, which was not made without a fair amount of trepidation on her part, ended up being the best one she could have made for her career. Her music was put on the backburner as she tested the waters of the film industry, getting a few movies under her belt but still essentially an unknown when her agent came with her to a question that would change everything: how did she feel about teenage vampire romances?
There was no way to truly be prepared for the whirlwind that was the Twilight franchise, and for Talia, already touch-and-go in interviews and around large crowds, the sudden onslaught of attention was positively overwhelming. But she had fought hard, harder than she'd ever admit publicly, for the role of Bella Swan, and was genuinely excited to be a part of the franchise, even if that meant having to put up with being surrounded by fans asking through their tears for the cast to bite them. Press tours were still a point of contention, as her default attack against nervousness under pressure was to overcompensate, leaving her often wildly fluctuating between nervous babble and coming off as completely disconnected. But the more time she spent in front of a camera, the more she grew as a performer, and though the Twilight films were widely regarded as a joke by discerning critics and Bella Swan a flat character at best and an insult to feminism at worst, those same critics noted (not without some confusion) that given better material in other projects, Talia wasn't a terrible actress. On the right project, she might even potentially be good. So who cared if she wasn't a press darling? She was an actress, not a spokesperson, and she wasn't enough of a mess that her publicity team couldn't cover her tracks when she stumbled.
The question of what, if anything, would come for the Twilight cast once the franchise was finally behind them continued to loom over the young actors as they wrapped filming for the last film. In Talia's more fortunate case, while projects continued to land on her table, the question became less of whether she'd be able to find work and more of whether she'd be able to prove herself as more than just a flash in the pan, driven forward with the momentum of a major franchise. The answer seemed to present itself in the release of indie film Short Term 12, nearly universally lauded as a tour de force performance from the actress who had spent her entire career teetering just on the edge of good. Though the frequent references to Bella &co never fully went away, having the Twilight films behind her made for a weight off her back she hadn't realized was there. There were still press tours to be had and interviews to fumble through, and it wasn't as if the paparazzi was ever just going to go away as long as she remained halfway relevant, but if she kept putting out quality work, the rest didn't matter as much. Hollywood was full of eccentric personalities; until she started throwing tupperware containers or going on twitter rampages, one twitchy girl who seemed to at least be trying to be nice hardly ranked.
Critics have been waiting with bated breath for a follow up project from Talia to prove Short Term 12 wasn't just a fluke, but with pickings so far being mostly underwhelming, a lot seems to be hinging on the success of The Glass Castle, which reunites her with director Destin Cretton. As for what's to follow? Well, it's not like she's spent many a night curled up in her New York apartment with Netflix and a tub of ice cream worrying about it.
No, wait, that definitely was her.