(Splash)
Updated: 2007-06-23 09:59

In fact Liv's parents inadvertently made sure that their daughter's life was unusual.

In the 1970s Buell was a model and onetime Playboy Playmate who dated a number of rock stars including David Bowie, Mick Jagger and Iggy Pop.

At 23, during a brief relationship with Steve Tyler she discovered she was pregnant and left the singer to return to her ex-boyfriend, Todd Rundgren.

Also a rock star, Rundgren had been her long-term partner and when Liv was born he put his name on the baby's birth certificate becoming her father.

It wasn't until she was 11, that Tyler discovered the truth, that Steve Tyler was her biological dad.

She saw the Aerosmith singer and her half-sister Mia backstage at one of Rundgren's concerts and the physical similarities between the three of them were undeniable.

Tyler - who considers both men to be her dad - admits there are some things she wishes were different during her childhood.

Raised alternatively between her mother, aunt and grandmother she says: "I haven't seen either of my fathers very much, because I never lived with them."

However, she doesn't hold this against her parents.

Tyler says: "I think there's a childlike quality to my mum and my dad. I don't know if I have it but I see it in them so much.

"I spent so much time trying to understand why things happened the way they did, or trying to understand what happened, that I created a vision in my mind of what my own life should be like.

"And I sort of woke up one day recently and realised that you can't live your life [like that].

"You can't control everything. You have to see where life takes you."

One person who did give Tyler pause for thought is her son Milo, whom she had with Royston Langdon, her husband of four years.

Tyler - who played Arwen in The Lord of the Rings trilogy - says at one point she was even thinking of a career change.

"At the time I got pregnant, I wasn't 100 per cent sure that acting was what I wanted to do," Liv says.

"I wasn't sure that it made me happy or fulfilled me.

"The on-set, acting, working part was beautiful, but there are all the other parts that are hard for actors, like press junkets and endless travelling around and talking about yourself.

"All those things started to outweigh the pleasure for me.

"Milo came at the most perfect time for me, in that I just really needed to figure all that stuff out."

At birth Tyler says that Milo looked like a "little angel with big lips and blue eyes and blonde hair."

But despite the arrival of her first baby, the actress felt she had to continue working.

She says bluntly: "I'm not a trust-fund kid. I mean, I have a cosmetics contract [with Givenchy], and I make a lot of money doing that, and I have to travel all over the world being like the Avon lady.

"I was reading a lot of scripts and going to a lot of meetings.

"And I was trying to get back in shape, so I went to the gym every day, sometimes twice a day.

"I have to make a living. I guess I could sell my house and go live a really simple life in a trailer somewhere."

Speaking of home-ownership Tyler, who bought her home when she was 23, is peeved at New York City.

The actress, who has been renovating her house, says she keeps on getting tickets because people have overloaded her skip. "Other people come and put their garbage in front of my house," she says.

"I keep getting these fines, and it's not my trash, and there's nothing you can do.

"Can you imagine what would happen if I went down to the court to fight $100?"

Tyler - who stars in the upcoming movie-thriller The Strangers - predicts she may buy into one aspect of Hollywood lifestyle, plastic surgery.

She says: "I'm definitely going to have some, I'm sure.

"Especially when you see what happens to your body after you have a baby."

For now the actress, model and mum has begun to develop an understanding and appreciation of her own mother's rebellious side.

Buell posed for Playboy in 1974 and it's a decision that her daughter respects.

Tyler says: "Recently, I asked my mum for an original copy of her Playboy pictures.

"When she did it she really ostracised herself from the modelling world.

"But it's so tasteful - you see a little bush, but not much. It was really beautiful.

"I couldn't believe her body, because our bodies look quite similar. I can see a lot of her in the shape of my face."

It's a leap forward for a woman who even hated her own name as a child. "I was embarrassed that my name was Liv. It wasn't like Jessica or something."

The face of Givenchy says: "All the pretty girls were named Jessica."

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