Tragic Details Of Liv Tyler

The ethereally beautiful star of "Armageddon" and "The Lord of the Rings" might be rock and roll royalty, but her life from teen model to acclaimed actress has not always been charmed. From discovering her true father as a tween to struggling with intense Hollywood scrutiny, Liv Tyler has navigated many heartbreaking moments.

The star has spoken candidly about the difficulties of being an aging woman in Hollywood, as well as the complexities that came from having such famous parents with unusual lifestyles. She's gracious through it all, though it's clear she's been deeply impacted. As an actress, Liv Tyler has become an icon for playing women with lots of emotional depth. Her characters, from the elven maiden Arwen to Bruce Willis' grieving space orphan, seem to brim with sensitivity. There's a depth and fragility to her performances, and those many dimensions on screen may have been shaped by the actress' own complicated life history.

The daughter of model Bebe Buell, Liv Tyler spent her early life believing she was the daughter of rock star Todd Rundgren. Buell was just 18 when her relationship with 23-year-old Rundgren began. The romance lasted for several years, but Buell conceived her daughter with Aerosmith front man Steven Tyler while the pair were on a break. When Rundgren and Buell reunited, they agreed to keep the secret from Liv Tyler until she was 18. But by August 1988, a then-11 Liv Tyler figured out the truth — that Rundgren was not her real father.

Though Rundgren has always been a caring father figure to Liv Tyler — she has called him her "spiritual father" — he has since reflected that it might have been better if they had been honest with her from the beginning. "'It would have been a much more simple story, for instance, if Bebe had fessed up and told Steven, 'Hey, this is your kid here,'" he explained in an interview with Variety.

Though Liv Tyler reports she has empathy for how her mother and two fathers navigated the situation, she confesses it was hard for her growing up. "As a child, I didn't understand why that would happen — how that could happen," Liv explained in an interview with The Telegraph.

Growing up with an artist mother meant that Liv Tyler's childhood was unconventional — and sometimes lonely and chaotic. After all, Buell was known for dating famous musicians like Mick Jagger and Jimmy Page. "I definitely knew that my family was eccentric. My mom was this wild woman who was in rock bands," Tyler explained in an interview with Wonderland.

Buell was just 23 when she gave birth to her daughter, and her unusual lifestyle hardly slowed. At three months old, Liv Tyler was left with an aunt and uncle in Maine for three years while Buell sorted her life out. Later, she would go to live in Virginia with her grandparents before eventually reuniting, full-time, with her mother.

"When I was born my mother was very young and she was struggling, she needed help," Tyler said. Still, it's clear the instability and temporary abandonment had a disruptive impact on her childhood. "It was hard for me as a kid, because I was definitely sad and angry that I didn't have this Perfect Mommy thing."

Bebe Buell has since revealed that she withheld the truth about Liv Tyler's father because of the Aerosmith frontman's struggles with drug addiction. Liv Tyler met Steven Tyler for the first time when she was about 8 years old and was immediately drawn to him — even before she knew about their connection. It was a few years later that Liv Tyler discovered the truth.

After the revelation, Steven Tyler became a more active presence in her life. She began spending time with him, changed her last name from Rundgren to Tyler, and appeared alongside Alicia Silverstone in a music video for the Aerosmith song "Crazy." The pair enjoyed plenty of high-profile father-daughter moments, even sharing clothes and visiting Disneyland together.

But having a rockstar dad hasn't been easy for Liv Tyler, who confesses that her relationship with her father has been strained at times, in part due to his unusual career and lifestyle. It's led to disconnection that isn't easily fixed, even now. "That relationship is still sort of hard," she said in her interview with Wonderland. "He's very busy, my dad. He's not around very much; it's sort of hard being the daughter of a rockstar. There's definitely, at times ... it can be painful."

Though Liv Tyler shot to fame as a fresh-faced star in "Empire Records" and "Stealing Beauty," she found that her career began to slow as she aged, and fewer memorable roles became available to her. "When you're in your teens or 20s, there is an abundance of ingénue parts which are exciting to play. But at [my age], you're usually the wife or the girlfriend — a sort of second-class citizen," she said in a 2015 interview with More magazine [via The Wrap].

In fact, Tyler was considering leaving acting altogether when she was offered the role of Meg Abbott in the HBO series "The Leftovers." "I did have a kind of weird conversation with myself where I kind of made a prayer to the universe of, 'If this doesn't happen it means that I am allowed to kind of pursue my other interests,'" she told the Irish Examiner in 2017 (via CinemaBlend). "'And then if it does happen then I'm not supposed to give up on acting,' and then it happened."

Following her acclaimed turn in "The Leftovers," Liv Tyler inked a multi-year deal to star in "911: Lone Star." However, she exited after just one season when the COVID-19 pandemic made travel difficult — revealing that she felt deeply concerned about the virus. The decision stalled what had otherwise appeared to be a high-momentum comeback for the actress, who had appeared in the 2017 miniseries "Gunpowder" and the Hulu series "Harlots" after the conclusion of "The Leftovers."

In the wake of the pandemic, Liv Tyler seemed to withdraw from Hollywood for several years, opting instead to focus on raising her children. However, the actress will reprise her role as Betty Ross in the 2025 Marvel film "Captain America: New World Order."

But it's possible she may prefer life out of the spotlight, as she's spoken about the intense scrutiny that accompanied her high-profile career — as well as her reluctance to change herself for the sake of fitting in. "I've been told that if I lose weight I'd have more work, but I refuse to submit myself to Hollywood standards. To the rest of the world, I am slim, and I like the way I am," she said in a 2013 interview with The Irish Examiner. It's inspiring that despite any personal difficulties, Tyler seems to have found satisfaction within herself.