Liv Rundgren Tyler (born July 1, 1977) is an American actress and model. She is the daughter of Aerosmith's lead singer, Steven Tyler, and Bebe Buell, model and singer. Tyler began a career in modeling at the age of 14, but after less than a year she decided to focus on acting. She made her film debut in the 1994 film Silent Fall. She then appeared in supporting roles in Empire Records (1995), Heavy (1996) and That Thing You Do! (1996). Tyler later achieved critical recognition in the leading role in Stealing Beauty (1996). She followed this by starring in supporting roles including Inventing the Abbotts (1997) and Cookie's Fortune (1999).
Tyler achieved international recognition as a result of her portrayal of Elf maiden Arwen Undómiel in the Lord of the Rings film trilogy. She has appeared in an eclectic range of films, including the 2004 comedy Jersey Girl, the indie film Lonesome Jim (2005), the drama Reign Over Me (2007) and big-budget studio films such as Armageddon (1998), The Strangers (2008) and The Incredible Hulk (2008).
Tyler has served as a United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) Goodwill Ambassador for the United States since 2003, and as a spokesperson for Givenchy's line of perfume and cosmetics.
Tyler was born Liv Rundgren at Mount Sinai Hospital in New York. She is the first-born daughter of Bebe Buell, a model, singer, and former Playboy Playmate (Miss November 1974), and Steven Tyler, the lead singer of Aerosmith. Her mother named her after Norwegian actress, Liv Ullmann, after seeing Ullmann on the cover of the March 5, 1977 issue of TV Guide. She is of Italian, German, Cherokee, and Russian ancestry on her father's side, and her mother is German-American Tyler has three half-siblings: Mia Tyler (born 1978), Chelsea Anna Tallarico (born 1989), and Taj Monroe Tallarico (born 1992). Her maternal grandmother, Dorothea Johnson, founded the Protocol School of Washington.
At Liv's birth, Buell claimed that rock star, Todd Rundgren, with whom Buell had been living since 1972, was Tyler's biological father. At age eight Tyler discovered that she was Steven Tyler's daughter after meeting him and noticing a resemblance she shared with his other daughter, Mia. When she asked her mother about the similarity, the secret was revealed. The truth about Tyler's paternity did not become public until five years later in 1991, when she changed her name from Rundgren to Tyler, but kept the former as a middle name. Buell's stated reason for the initial decision was that Steven was too heavily addicted to drugs at the time of her birth. Since learning the truth about her paternity, Liv and Steven have developed a close relationship.They also have worked together professionally, once when she appeared in Aerosmith's music video for "Crazy" in 1993, and again when Aerosmith performed many of the songs in the film Armageddon (1998) in which Liv Tyler starred.
Tyler attended the Congressional Schools of Virginia, Breakwater School and Waynflete School in Portland, Maine, before returning to New York City with her mother at age 12. She went to York Preparatory in New York City for junior high and high school after her mother researched the school to accommodate Tyler's ADHD. At the age of 14, she was put on Ritalin for it, which she still takes as an adult. She graduated in 1995, and left to continue her acting career. When asked about the way she spent her early life, Tyler said: "For me, I didn’t get much of a childhood in my teen years because I’ve been working since I was 14. But that also kept me out of trouble. When everybody was doing acid and partying like crazy, I was at work on a movie in Tuscany ... having my own fun, of course, but it was a different kind of thing. I have no regrets. I love the way my life has gone."
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