Liv

ROCKSTAR'S DAUGHTER. ROCKSTAR'S EX-WIFE. SCREEN GODDESS. ELF PRINCESS. HULK-LOVE... FORGET EVERYTHING YOU THOUGHT YOU KNEW ABOUT THE OWNER OF THE SECOND MOST FAMOUS LIPS IN HOLLYWOOD. LOUISE BREALEY MEETS THE REAL LIV TYLER

The Things Everyone Knows About Liv Tyler

She is Steven-Tyler-from-Aerosmith’s daughter.

It is the coldest day of the New York City winter so far. Liv Tyler is late for lunch, and I’m getting twitchy. Not because Liv Tyler is late. Not even because she is almost half an hour late. But because Sant Ambroeus – a West Village newcomer rammed with well-heeled thirty-somethings – is possibly the noisiest restaurant Liv Tyler could have chosen. And I have the second cheapest tape machine for sale on Tottenham Court Road: a machine guaranteed to pick up nothing but the Frank Sinatra medley thumping from eight wall-mounted speakers. Outside, the windchill factor dips to minus 18. I begin, quietly, to sweat.

Things You Can Read About Liv Tyler On The Internet

She is 31. She is Cancerian. She married Royston Langdon, a musician from Leeds, in 2003. He used to front Spacehog. They separated in May 2008, and are now divorced. They have a four-year-old son called Milo. She did a striptease for Alicia Silverstone in Aerosmith’s Crazy video when she was still a schoolgirl. Her mother is Bebe Buell, rock chick , ex-Playboy Playmate and supergroupie (as well as Tyler and rocker Todd Rundgren – the man Liv thought was her dad til she was 11 – Buell’s conquests include David Bowie, Iggy Pop, Lou Reed, Jimmy Page, Mick Jagger and Elvis Costello. Not a bad haul).

The table Tyler has selected is at the back of the restaurant, in a discreet corner, three inches from a Spanish tour group loudly debating Sant Ambroeus’ charms. I count 11 voluble older women in fur-trimmed puffer jackets and expensive blow-drys before I raise my own voice, try “Testing, testing 1,2,3” – the tape machine pretty much in my mouth – and record nothing but the Spanish for “I’ve heard they’re famous for their cakes”. Shit.

Things You Might Not Know About Liv Tyler

She laughs all the time. She likes Marks & Spencer’s carrots. She hates public speaking of any kind, once blacking out at a press conference from nerves. She turns into a wanton nymph in front of a still camera. Her voice is childlike, soft, like Marilyn Monroe’s. She says the word ‘normal’ eight times, with reference to herself, during our two-hour conversation. She uses English words like ‘bloody’ and ‘brilliant’ and ‘spazzed’ and ‘wanker’. She fancies Johnny Depp.

A sudden flurry of snow in the street conveniently heralds Tyler’s arrival. Black wool cape, black tights, black eyeliner and black pumps. Her hair, cut in a long bob with a fringe, is darker than I thought it would be. She’s tall, but not big. She looks tired. And she is grinning sweetly. “Hello! I am really sorry I’m so late.” Not at all, I say. Think nothing of it. It’s fine. I’m Louise, I offer. “Oh,” she smiles, “I’m Liv.” We shake hands, embarrassed. Because of course she knows I know she knows I know her name and it’s all a bit awkward for a moment. There is a pause.

Why Liv Tyler Was Late

“Bobby, my best friend, who’s living in my house, said, ‘If you are still sleeping late, do you want me to wake you up?’ and I was like, ‘Bobby – Milo wakes up at 5.30. I’m going to be wide awake at 5!’ And then I woke up at 10. And I kept dozing and I came down to have a cup of coffee with him and I looked at the clock and it was a quarter to 12. And I ran upstairs and I was like, ‘Wait! What am I going to wea-a-a-r?’ And I couldn’t find any stockings – all my Wolfords were in L.A. or had runs, and then I found a bag of some new ones and I was very excited.”

I love your cape, I say. She frowns: “I’d completely forgotten it was Sunday. It’s far too loud in here, isn’t it? What can we do?” I don’t know, I reply. Um. Go somewhere else? Tyler looks at me strangely, makes a decision. “I’ve got it! Why don’t we get a take-out from here and sit round my kitchen table and I can make coffee?” She orders scrambled eggs and a salad to split.

We briskly walk the single block to her house, both a little nervous. It is ridiculously cold. Tyler’s cape is beautiful, but it doesn’t look remotely warm enough. She talks to fill in the gaps. No questions about her divorce, I’ve been expressly told by her publicist. Yet by the time we arrive at her front door, Tyler has spoken of nothing but the fallout from the end of her five-year marriage: “It’s a little bit sad… because this is the house I’ve lived in forever with my husband, and this is the first time I’ve been home in four months, and I just got in last night from L.A. and, well, a lot of stuff has gone. Roy moved a lot of stuff out.”

Tyler’s candour about her break-up and the obvious pain behind it are instantly disarming. It feels perverse not to tell her that you’re sorry, that you understand. So I break the first rule of the celebrity interview, and confide back. We arrive at her front door. Tyler touches my shoulder and smiles. A kind, generous smile that says she knows just how it feels and that it’s all going to be all right: “You know, Louise, what’s hard when you are going through the pain of a breakup is when everyone says, ‘It’ll get better one day,’ and you’re like, ‘Fuck off! You don’t know how I feel.’ But the truth is that, it takes a long time, but you do kind of wake up one day and you just feel a little tiny bit better…”

Liv Tyler's House In Manhattan

It’s a three-storey brownstone. She uses the basement door, which opens onto a sitting room. There is a single chair and a coat stand with “matching Alpaca wool hats for me and Milo”. A black-and-white photo of David Bowie sits on the sideboard. A white upholstered armchair faces the door. The stairs going up to the rest of the house are to the left. To the right, there’s an archway through to a little room with green wooden cupboards and a butler sink. Beyond that is the kitchen.

Liv Tyler: [Hanging our coats] I won’t take you upstairs to the sad parts. There are pictures off the walls, and furniture gone… It’s freaky, it’s really weird. Thank god the kitchen doesn’t look too bad… I’m crap at interviews. I get really nervous and stressed. And afterwards I always think, “Oh my god what did I say, what did I do?” No one’s ever been in my kitchen before. Not that it’s that exciting…[Laughs]

Loiuse Brealey: Oh I don’t know. Yours is the biggest fridge I’ve ever seen. It’s like a shed.

LT: Isn’t it ridiculous? Usually it’s very full, but it’s empty because we’ve been gone.

Liv Tyler's Films

Tyler was sweet in an angora jumper in cult hit Empire Records but got her real break losing her virginity in Bernardo Bertolucci’s Stealing Beauty. Since then she has been in love with Ralph Fiennes in Onegin, Joaquin Phoenix in Inventing The Abbotts (he was her real-life beau for three years), Ben Affleck in Armageddon, Viggo Mortensen in The Lord Of The Rings, Ben Affleck again in Jersey Girl, Casey Affleck in Lonesome Jim and, most recently, Edward Norton’s Incredible Hulk. Last autumn, she was terrorised by mask-wearing ne’er-do-wells in The Strangers.

LB: So. I watched your films back to back on the plane and in the hotel last night.

LT: And you fell asleep!

LB: No, I didn’t. Well. Only in the big slug-out at the end of The Incredible Hulk!

LT: [Laughing] I never watch my movies. I was actually just thinking that Milo might be ready to watch The Lord Of The Rings, because he’s really into dragons and princesses. He always calls me his princess: he comes into my closet and there’s this one dress, which is like a long kind of tie-dye dress to the floor, and he asks me to put it on every day. And I was just like, “Wait! I am a princess in that movie!” I can’t find the coffee. Bobby must’ve moved it. [She goes to stairwell and shouts] Where’s the coffee? [An inaudible response from the first floor] Thank you!

Liv Tyler's Kitchen

The room is dominated by a pine table and big black shiny units. There are three tiny stickers on the fridge. Two of them say Milo, in a child’s handwriting. On the worktop is a mock-50s diner-style CD player, a small watercooler, two blue storage jars, one saying coffee, and a bottle of lemon juice. There is a mark on the wall above the fireplace where a clock belonging to Langdon used to hang. On the floor is a child’s red chair, a fire engine, a whiteboard. There are white metal bars on the window. On the table is a bowl with a single apple, a bottle of stain remover, a jar of Himalayan pink salt and an ashtray with an empty packet of Marlboro Lights.

LB: You smoke?

LT: I do sometimes. And now that no one’s here I can smoke here! [She sits down, her knees under her chin] So… the trauma! I thought, “I’m going to be cool: I have a house full of clothes so I’m just going to bring a carry-on bag with my essential toiletries, my computer, my books and my underwear.” And then I get here and I realise that just before I left I did a huge closet clean-out. I gave away everything. So I was like “Fuck”. And then I remembered Stella – McCartney – had given me that cape for my birthday! I opened my coat closet and it was sitting there with a golden halo around it. So thanks for saying you love my cape. I haven’t been shopping for five months. I stopped reading all fashion and trash magazines. I don’t want to be influenced any more by what’s in and what’s out and what makes somebody cool or not cool. In the middle of the night I’d go and take a pee, and on the bathroom floor would be a magazine, and I found myself memorising banal headlines like 500 Best Black Tops. So I read only books – A Farewell To Arms, it’s a heartbreaker, oh god – and decoration magazines.

LB: Where have you been decorating?

LT: I’ve been doing a house up in L.A.

LB: But you’re a New Yorker!

LT: I am a total, no-doubts-about-it, one hundred per cent New Yorker. It’s been really hard. My boy says to me probably every two days, “Mommy, when are we going home?” Basically what happened is that ever since I had Milo, I was feeling a bit stressed being in this neighbourhood. It changed so much here; I felt like I was being watched all the time.

LB: And were you?

LT: Well there are a lot of people and a lot of tourists. There’s even like a Sex And The City tour where they walk past everyone’s houses. And I just, for my boy, I wanted him to have the things that I had growing up in Maine; and Roy had, growing up in Leeds. I was confused about what to do. And then when Roy and I broke up, it was very hard to be in this house without him. So we decided to move to L.A. for a little. I kind of thought, “Well I’ve been an actress since I was 16 and I’ve never lived in L.A., so let me see what it’s like.” [Liv goes to the phone and orders full fat milk , a New York Times and two packs of Marlboro Lights]

LB: So when do you think you’ll want to get back to work?

LT: When it was all happening, I went through six months where I didn’t read a single script. I just wasn’t ready to work in any way. I feel like now it’s the New Year, I’m ready.

For more see the issue 17 of Wonderland