Liv Tyler is most known two major roles: Arwen Undómiel in Lord of the Rings and Steven Tyler’s biological daughter.
The latter is quite the interesting story, as is the fact that she almost quit acting a few years ago.
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Interested to learn more? Keep reading for these 10+ facts about Liv Tyler that fans didn’t know.
1. Her first role was in 1994’s *Silent Fall*.
She played the elder sister of a boy with autism. The next year, she landed a role in Empire Records .
She went on to call it “one of the best experiences” she’s ever had.
2. She didn’t like being in the spotlight so young.
Since she started modeling at 14, she had a taste of fame early.
“At the time, I was kind of annoyed by it because I just wanted to be with friends and be in school,” she told The Sunday Post .
3. She only discovered that Steve Tyler was her father when she was eight.
In a story that reads like a movie, Liz said that she knew Tyler was her father the moment she met him backstage at a concert.
“When you meet kin, there is an energy and sparkle between your bodies,” she told *The Guardian* in 2017.
“It must be chemical somehow — DNA and genes. I felt a connection in a very strong way when I met him as a little girl and I didn’t know why at first, but I figured it out rather quickly,” she said .
Soon afterward, she confronted her mother, model and musician Bebe Buell, and learned the truth.
Her mother had kept the paternity from her since Steven was struggling with drug addiction when Liv was young.
It was Utopia singer, Todd Rundgren, who stepped in to raise Liv, making the actress grow up with two dads.
4. Her family life may be unconventional, but she loves having two dads.
“I always wanted to be a mom and to be a family unit because, growing up, I had such an eccentric family,” she told The Sunday Post .
“I had a really beautiful family but I lived with my mom for a while, then with my aunt for a while, with my grandma and I had two dads.
5. She has three children.
Well, technically, four if you include her fiance, Dave Gardner’s son, Grey.
There is also Milo from Liv’s previous marriage to Royston Langdon and the two children, Sailor and Lula, which she had with Dave.
“We’re a bit like the Brady Bunch,” Tyler told The Kit.
Since Dave is English (he’s best friends with David Beckham), the family all live in London, England .
As someone who relishes her privacy, she loves living away from the craziness of Hollywood.
6. She appeared in an Aerosmith music video with Alicia Silverstone.
Together, they made a Thelma & Louise -style video.
This was actually the music video that made the director of Clueless fall in love with Alicia Silverstone and want her for the role of Cher.
7. She never wanted to be an actress.
She thought that she would be a musician , given her dads’ musical backgrounds.
“I didn’t really have any classic training and if you asked me if I wanted to be an actress when I was a kid, I wouldn’t have said yes, I don’t think.”
8. In the end, it was her mother who encouraged her to act.
“It was my mother who always used to tell me I was going to be an actress and she could see something in me. I have always been empathetic. I’m a sponge for observing people and how they feel. Even at a young age, I had an awareness of emotion. I think she saw that in me.”
9. Her *Lord of the Rings* character went through a lot of changes before filming.
“When I went down to New Zealand, originally, it was to play a totally different character in that the character that was originally written in the script was much more present in the journey with the Fellowship and was not the character that she was in the book,” she told Girl.com.au .
This led to some complications for the actress.
“And the more I did that stuff, the further away we were getting from why they cast me, and what was true of Arwen. They realized that and so we went back, looked at the book and the appendix and reshaped the character.”
10. She kept Arwen’s elf ears from *Lord of the Rings*.
It’s not unusual for actors to take home props from the sets they’re working on.
But this didn’t turn out well for Liz, who said that one of the ears melted…
The ears melted because they were sort of like a prosthetic glycerin kind of thing,” she told Stephen Colbert in 2018.
“The ears are prosthetic and kid of make out of gelatin. I left one on the dashboard of the car and it melted into the car.”
11. She believes that transcendental meditation has made her a better mother.
This is the practice of sitting in silence and repeating a mantra for 20 minutes, two times per day.
“Meditation and being close to yourself helps everything in your life,” she said at a charity event for the David Lynch Foundation in 2012.
She continued:
“It helps me make better decisions and be a better mother, and just deal with the daily stress of the modern world that we live in. It helps everything.”
12. She almost quit acting.
She told the Irish Examiner that she began to doubt herself during the audition process for the HBO series, The Leftovers .
She told herself that if she didn’t land the role, then she was supposed to give up on acting.
13. She doesn’t have a desire to get married.
She may be engaged to Dave Gardner, but you won’t be hearing wedding bells anytime soon.
“I always felt like marriage should be more of a reward… for surviving your relationship,” Tyler told Tatler magazine. “I feel everyone’s got it backwards.”
