The Transformation Of Liv Tyler Has Been Stunning To See

Liv Tyler's journey through life and show business has been anything but ordinary. From her unconventional beginnings as the daughter of a rock legend who wasn't aware of her and, later, an unlikely teen model to her ascension to the top of Hollywood and billion-dollar movies, Tyler has experienced significant twists and turns dating back to childhood. All the while, she has defied convention just as effortlessly as she has managed to defy her age, marching to the beat of her own drummer, and eventually leaving her acting career behind to lead a more domestic existence.

So, while her physical transformation has been subtle over the years, the way her story has played out has been anything but, and it has been stunning to see. Here's our summary of Tyler's transformation, from childhood to her 2025 return to acting.

Liv Tyler was born in 1977 to model and singer Bebe Buell — who had a wild past of her own – while the former Playboy playmate was living with rocker Todd Rundgren. In fact, it was Rundgren who was listed on Tyler's birth certificate, despite the fact that Buell had briefly been in a relationship with Steven Tyler at the time of her conception. "As the story goes, [Buell] called Todd and said she was pregnant and he asked her to come home to where they lived in Woodstock in upstate New York," Liv said on Kate Hudson and Oliver Hudson's Sibling Revelry podcast (via E! News) in 2025. "He very courageously and lovingly said, 'This child needs a father, and I will be the father.'"

Despite the complicated family dynamics lurking just beneath the surface when she was growing up, Liv was primarily raised by the women in her life.

"My mother, grandmother, and my aunt all mothered me," Tyler told Harper's Bazaar in 2012. Growing up, she split her time between Maine and the suburbs of Washington, D.C.; when she was just four months old, Buell sent her to the Pine Tree State to live with a cousin, known to Liv as "Aunt Annie." "I'd live at Annie's and at my mom's pretty much equally," the actress told Vanity Fair in 1997. "I consider Aunt Annie my other mom. I get a lot of my simplicities from her."

Liv Tyler discovered that Steven Tyler was her biological father in a movie-like fashion at an Aerosmith concert. The year was 1988, and Liv was a pre-teen at the time when her mother brought her to the aforementioned concert, where she also met her half-sister, Mia Tyler. "I looked at my mom, and she just started crying," Liv recalled on "Sibling Revelry" (via Fox News). "My mom was bawling, and I was like, 'Is Steven my dad?' and she just burst." She went on to explain that her mother then took her to a bench at the outdoor amphitheater where the concert was being held, at which point she explained the whole story of her parentage.

Liv officially met Mia for the first time backstage. "I remember because there were no kids backstage," Mia said on the podcast. "So, her and I just played hard that night. And we were at this VIP area, outside of the green rooms, and ... this fan lady came up, and she was like, 'Oh my god, you girls are so cute. Are you guys sisters?'" Turns out they were.

Liv described it as a difficult situation — and she believes that Todd Rundgren likely still feels a measure of pain — but a paternity test ultimately confirmed that truth. She maintained a positive outlook at the time, concluding that she now had two dads and a lot of love in her life. Fast-forward to now, and Liv continues to have a strong relationship with her biological father.

While the children of famous parents are forced to live in the limelight from a young age, Liv Tyler lived a relatively low-key life during her younger years. However, she started to garner her own attention as a teenager when she entered the world of modeling. One might say that she was discovered by Czech supermodel Paulina Porizkova, who took the photos that eventually led to Tyler signing with New York's Spectrum agency as an eighth-grader.

In 1997, Tyler told Interview Magazine that she enjoyed her brief time as a model, but it wasn't a natural fit. "[It was] a lot of fun, like playing dress-up," she told the outlet. "I'd feel ugly and awkward and chubby, and they'd transform me. Not that that makes everything better." She went on to appear in magazines like YM, Seventeen, Italian Vogue, and more, but it wasn't long before she got frustrated with the whole process.

"Like, why do I have to go home after school and get dressed up and put makeup on my face, and then go to a photographer's studio where there's 15 other girls with their books and have to prove myself?" she said.

Despite her success as a model and her desire to one day star in films, Liv Tyler's first big breakout actually came in an iconic 1994 music video, via her familial connection to Steven Tyler (at least indirectly). During a 2018 SiriusXM interview with Michelle Collins, Liv recalled that she was just 16 years old when she was tapped to star in the music video for Aerosmith's hit "Crazy" alongside rising star Alicia Silverstone, who had appeared in the music videos for "Cryin'" and "Amazing" one year earlier.

"Weirdly, it wasn't my dad, it was the director ... There are three videos, and he had done the first two, and he had seen me and wanted to kind of cast me, and then realized that I was my dad's daughter," she said. "So, he went to my dad and asked for permission." The video went on to become one of the most popular videos to air on MTV during that era. Two decades later (in 2016), the video's stars would reunite, and Silverstone shared the moment via Instagram. Liv, meanwhile, joked that they should recreate the video, pitching (via Entertainment Weekly), "Me and Alicia walking around ... With our children running around behind us?"

Liv Tyler's debut role in a feature film came in the 1994 Akiva Goldsman-penned psychological thriller "Silent Fall," which starred Richard Dreyfuss, Linda Hamilton, and John Lithgow. In the film, Tyler played Sylvie Warden, the older sister of an autistic boy who witnessed the murder of his parents. However, the film was a box office bomb, grossing just over $3 million against a reported $30 million production budget, per Box Office Mojo, and received negative reviews from critics.

While "Silent Fall" failed to make a significant impact, Tyler fared infinitely better in the 1995 indie drama "Heavy" and the coming-of-age comedy "Empire Records," the latter of which propelled her firmly into the realm of rising movie stars on its way to attaining cult classic status. In the film, which was directed by Allan Moyle, Tyler portrayed Corey Mason, a young honor student working alongside a group of other young people at the titular record store. The film's impact far exceeded its minuscule box office take; even now, Rex Manning Day, the date on which a fictional recording star musician visited the store, is a meme and mock holiday celebrated by the internet.

After "Empire Records," Tyler continued to build her acting profile with roles in the drama "Stealing Beauty" and the comedy-drama "That Thing You Do!" over the next two years, the latter of which saw her star alongside Tom Hanks.

By the time 1998 rolled around, Liv Tyler — who was now in her early 20s — was a known quantity in Hollywood and a veritable star on the rise. However, her performance as Grace Stamper in the Michael Bay-directed disaster film "Armageddon" that year made her an A-Lister. In the film, Tyler's Grace is the daughter of Bruce Willis' Harry Stamper and the girlfriend of Ben Affleck's A.J. Frost — both of whom are sent into space as part of a plan to drill into and destroy a gigantic asteroid on a collision course with Earth.

"Armageddon" was a massive success, grossing more than $550 million worldwide against a reported production budget of $140 million. It also gave her an opportunity to work with her father — Aerosmith's song "Don't Wanna Miss a Thing" was on the film's soundtrack and served as its de facto theme song. As big as that movie was, though, it was Tyler's turn as Arwen in Peter Jackson's "Lord of the Rings" trilogy from 2001 to 2003 that immortalized her as an actress.

Those films grossed nearly $3 billion combined during their original theatrical run, per The Numbers, and were a hit with critics while permeating every aspect of the pop culture zeitgeist. Even now, Tyler wishes she could rejoin the "LOTR" universe as Arwen, telling Screen Rant in 2025, "It was such a gift to our lives. ... I would do anything to be able to see it again, feel it again, but we live it in our hearts and our minds now."

Like any major celebrity, Liv Tyler's relationships have been followed and chronicled by fans, casual observers, and the media alike. Her first relationship to garner major interest from the press was with fellow actor Joaquin Phoenix (who has given some awkward interviews over the years). Tyler and Phoenix first met while working together on the 1995 drama "Inventing the Abbotts," and were an item until 1998. "I fell in love with Joaquin the second I saw him," a 19-year-old Tyler said (via The Morning Call) in 1997. "It just happened immediately."

The couple split amicably, with Phoenix telling Cosmopolitan in 1999 (via The Things), "I'm a great believer in people coming into your life, and you into theirs, for a reason. And I know that when Liv and I met, it was for a reason — I really needed her, and she really needed me ... at a certain point, I think we stopped evolving with each other." Tyler found love again, though, a few years later, marrying rocker Royston Langdon in 2003, whom she had met the same year she split with Phoenix.

Tyler later told InStyle (via The Sydney Morning Herald) that she hadn't believed in marriage or divorce, but changed her tune after meeting Langdon. Nevertheless, the couple divorced in 2008, but not before welcoming a son, Milo Langdon, into the world. She later confessed to having "a rough couple years" in an interview with Bust (via the Daily Mail).

Throughout her career, Liv Tyler has been as active behind the scenes with multiple philanthropic efforts as she has been on set and in front of the camera. She began working with UNICEF in 2003, after receiving inspiration from Angelina Jolie and Audrey Hepburn. Tyler reportedly made the decision to become a national ambassador for the charity's American fund after meeting Hepburn's son at a fundraiser. 

"I was really blown away and inspired by everything that she had done for children through UNICEF. It really floored me in a way that I hadn't ever felt toward a public figure before. To see her kindness was inspiring and spoke to me as a person. She was so real and so elegant," Tyler said (via Look to the Stars). She also praised Jolie for her work with UNICEF in Asia, citing her travels to places like Cambodia in support of children.

As tracked by Look to the Stars, Tyler has supported organizations and initiatives including UNICEF, the Breast Cancer Research Foundation, Food Bank For New York City, Free Arts NYC, NYCLASS, St. Jude Children's Research Hospital, The Lunchbox Fund, and To Write Love on Her Arms over the years.

After divorcing Royston Langdon in 2008, Tyler eventually found love again with British sports agent David Gardner. The pair began dating in 2014, and their relationship endured for many years. In 2015, they welcomed a son, Sailor Gardner, into the world, and he was followed by a daughter, Lula Gardner, the following year. Tyler and Gardner reportedly got engaged in 2015, too, but the pair never married. As reported by The Mirror and other outlets, the couple ultimately decided to split in 2021. However, Tyler's split from her longtime fiancé was reportedly amicable.

A source reportedly told The Sun that they had spent the first COVID-19-related lockdown together, and were "a great team as parents," but that they eventually grew apart and began living separate lives. "Both wanted to focus on their careers — her acting and producing, and Dave running his business and working on [David Beckham's] Inter Miami football project," the source said. It was further noted that they had quietly split months before it became a story, keeping it quiet for the sake of the kids before emerging from the situation as "the best of pals."

Having been through the Hollywood grind from a very young age and experienced upheaval in her personal life, Liv Tyler found herself at a crossroads in the mid-2010s. By this point, she was nearing 40 and had her first child at home. Meanwhile, the roles that made her a star were many years in the rearview. Before she could pull the plug, however, her role as Meg Abbott in the HBO series "The Leftovers" came along.

"I'd think: maybe I should just move to the country and open a store and write books and make music and have a million babies and take in animals," she told The Guardian in 2014. "Part of me always longed for it. I'd look at the entertainment industry as a whole and I'd think, 'Where do I fit into all this and do I even want to be a part of it?' Then this came along and it made everything worth waiting for."

Tyler went on to appear in the majority of the show's episodes across its three seasons. From there, she continued to work in film and landed major parts in other series, including the ITV/Hulu drama "Harlots" and the Fox procedural "9-1-1: Lone Star."

After she completed her work on Season 1 of "9-1-1: Lone Star," it would be five years before Liv Tyler's fans saw her on the screen again. Despite achieving success in the role of EMS captain Michelle Blake on the show, Tyler asked out of her contract early amid family concerns and the uncertainty of a transatlantic commute during the COVID-19 pandemic. At the time, Tyler was living in London with David Gardner and her three kids. According to Deadline, she had previously managed her schedule to allow her kids to join her in Los Angeles for shoots during vacations. However, the pandemic flipped that script.

Tyler would remain at home even after the era of social distancing and lockdowns came to an end, which didn't exactly come as a surprise, given some of her past statements. As she said in a 2001 interview with The Guardian, "Life excites me. I'm not talking about appearing in movies or doing interviews, but just little, normal, everyday things. Getting out of bed. Getting dressed. Making food. I find it all exciting, you know?"

Now in her 40s with a family of her own to take care of, her Hollywood success had afforded her the opportunity to experience those things to the fullest.

While Liv Tyler gave us a veritable bonanza of memorable roles and moments across her nearly three-decade run in showbusiness up until the pandemic, fans of the Marvel Cinematic Universe will recall that she was once a foundational piece of its now-iconic mythos, playing Betty Ross in 2008's "The Incredible Hulk" — the second MCU film to be produced after it was birthed in "Iron Man." So, it's apropos that her return to acting after a five-year hiatus came via her return to the role in 2025's "Captain America: Brave New World."

The seemingly ageless Tyler, who was 47 when the film hit theaters, was visibly excited about her big comeback while speaking to Extra at the premiere, telling the outlet, "I've taken a break from acting for the past few years, and I've been home with my children — I have two small ones and a big one — and it was just such a lovely way, after COVID and everything, to come back to something so special." Added Tyler: "It was sort of a perfect way to lure me back into remembering how much I love acting."