by Paul Fischer
by
Paul Fischer
It would be fair to say that Liv Tyler
is more than just a pretty face. Walking into a room, she 
remains
a luminous presence, with her unusual hand-made blouse, cut off at the shoulders,
her one individual earring that extends below the ear, and cigarette daintily
in hand. She was courting the press to talk about her new film, the irreverent
black comedy One Night at McCool's in which she plays a ballsy femme fatale
who is the object of three men's desires and fantasies.
Possessing the same, sensual, full-lipped mouth as her famous rock singer father Steven Tyler of Aerosmith, the tall and lanky Liv Tyler initially followed in her mother Bebe Buell's footsteps and began a modelling career at the age of 14, though she soon soured on that profession. Raised by Buell and rock musician Todd Rundgren, she did not learn the true identity of her biological father until she was 11, but it was her appearance as a teen siren, along with future star Alicia Silverstone, in Aerosmith's "Crazy" video in 1994 that really put her on the map. That same year, Tyler made a strong feature debut in the unsettling role of a teenager who kills her sexually abusive father and complicit mother when she discovers him molesting her brother and then comes on to her therapist (Richard Dreyfuss) in Bruce Beresford's Silent Fall. She followed with roles in James Mangold's Heavy and in Allan Moyle's disappointing Empire Records (both 1995). Bernardo Bertolucci had searched high and low for a girl who could star in his Stealing Beauty (1996), casting her as a young American girl who arrives in Italy knowing one father and leaves knowing another. Woody Allen also cast her but later cut her cameo in the musical Everyone Says I Love You, and she appeared in Tom Hanks' directorial debut, That Thing You Do! (both 1996), as the girlfriend of the lead singer of a 60s rock band. After starring in yet another coming-of-age tale, Pat O'Connor's Inventing the Abbotts (1997), Tyler embarked on Armageddon (1998), her first commercial blockbuster amidst a steady diet of arthouse films. Next she was back on more familiar terrain for her three movies released in 1999. Robert Altman's Southern Gothic comedy Cookie's Fortune, Jake Scott's Plunkett & Macleane and Martha Fiennes' Onegin.
In the often-farcical One Night at McCool's, Tyler is the love object of three men (Matt Dillon, John Goodman and Paul Reiser) who all tell their tale of woe sitting around the bar. Recently she also re-teamed with Altman as one of the many women of Dr T and the Women starring Richard Gere as the titular gynecologist, surrounded by the likes of Helen Hunt, Laura Dern, Farrah Fawcett and Shelley Long, among others. She then took off for New Zealand to play the expanded-for-the-film role of Elf-princess Arwen in Peter Jackson's adaptation of J.R.R. Tolkien's "The Lord of the Rings," slated for successive Christmas releases in 2001, 2002 and 2003. The three movies filmed at one time represented a considerable jump in scale for Tyler from her biggest film, Armageddon.
Beyond her accomplished work, the beautiful 24-year old is engaged to British rocker, Royston Langdon, lead singer with the band Spacehog, lives in New York and couldn't be happier. This interview conducted in March, 2001.
CrankyCritic: So what elements of your character, Jewel, in One Night
at McCool's did you personally relate to, because she's been defined as both
Madonna and whore?
Liv
Tyler: I don't ever really think about it like that, but until I do interviews,
then it's a little bit weird, because it's not a question of me identifying with
her or not; I'm playing her and so it, and it's not about me thinking about
that. I'm in her head and thinking: I don't have time to think about how
I relate to her plus be her at the same time.
CrankyCritic: So what do you think of her then?
Liv Tyler: There are a lot of things I find interesting about this film and
why I wanted to play her. I loved the idea that you never see her from her
point of view, and you only ever see her from the points of view of these three
men. It's all about projection. They're projecting onto her what they want her
to be, and they are fulfilling that place for them and in turn filling something
up missing from their lives and that's making them feel somehow.
CrankyCritic: It's all about male fantasy too, isn't it?
Liv Tyler: Yeah, that's the whole point.
CrankyCritic: As an actor, are you concerned about being cast as the
embodiment of male fantasy?
Liv Tyler: It's just in the film; it's not the embodiment of all
men. It's just this film and it's a comedy, taken to the extreme, and most men
have fantasies like that.
CrankyCritic:
Have you met women similar to Jewel to help you prepare?
Liv Tyler: Not that I know of; I usually do all of that in my head. When
I'm reading something I can already expect to see what she'll look like, what
her hair will be like, maybe how she'll dress and maybe things that she'll do.
Then I just kinda try it out and it all comes together by being in the costume,
etc. I've never based a character specifically on someone before.
CrankyCritic: Where do you find the balance between being an
empowered woman and just being mean?
Liv Tyler: I don't know, I didn't think I was.
CrankyCritic: I mean in the movie? [LAUGHTER]
Liv Tyler: I don't think she's just a malicious, bad, mean person. She,
like everyone, has a dream in their lives, some goal, something about themselves
they want to change or something that's unattainable that they can't have;
she's just willing to do extreme things to fulfill her dream. Plus she's not all
there. I always saw her as being a bit bipolar, and that she always believed all
the lies and schemes she was coming up with. She wasn't just being malicious and
manipulative; for her, she made them her truth.
CrankyCritic: How do you get past your own image. Being beautiful, is
it hard to get past producers' perceptions of you on that level and go deeper
when casting you?
Liv Tyler: I don't see that. I choose the parts that I want to do, I read
the scripts and obviously I don't get offered every movie, but I'm choosing
those things that I want to do. I think I've been really lucky in doing different
kinds of parts throughout my career.
CrankyCritic: Is that why you act? Because you get to play act?
Liv Tyler: I don't know. I do it because I like it; I don't really sit
and analyze why I do it. In a way I think acting found me. I got offered my first
part in Silent Fall and I'd only been on two auditions, so at that point
I was like: I don't know about this. Then when I did Heavy, all these bells
went off in my head and I thought: Wow this is great and I actually get paid
for it. I'm here having a blast.
CrankyCritic:
Why music, not acting, given your dad?
Liv Tyler: When I was a kid all I ever wanted to be was a singer, because
of my parents. I still love to sing. I feel hesitant about saying it because people
will always twist it around whenever I say I love music or want to sing, because
they go: So when's your album coming out? It's not about that. Jewel's dream is
to have a house, maybe music is my hidden fantasy, you know what I mean?
But it's more personal.
CrankyCritic: Talking about personal, I read that you're getting married
to a rock person.
Liv Tyler: That's true.
CrankyCritic: Can you tell us a bit about him?
Liv Tyler: What do you want to know? He's beautiful and from Leeds in
England and we've known each other for about 6 years.
CrankyCritic: How did you meet?
Liv Tyler: Just through mutual friends. And I always had a huge
crush on him and him on me. And I used to fantasize about him all the time and
think about him, but never thought ----- I don't know. We've been together for
about three years. I'm madly in love with him and we have a very special relationship
and friendship. I couldn't be happier.
CrankyCritic: When are you getting married?
Liv Tyler: I don't know.
CrankyCritic: Did your dad ever warn you off rock stars?
Liv Tyler: No! I'm not going to listen to my dad anyway. I'm really different
from my parents. I think I came out as being the more conservative in the bunch.
Not completely, but I am different.
CrankyCritic: Yeah, but yer mum's a very lively lady, so does that make
you the black sheep of the family?
Liv Tyler: (laughter) No I'm a bit of everybody. When I grew up, I had
2 dads and a mum, my grandmother, my aunts sometimes, so I got all these perspectives.
My grandmother is the most successful etiquette consultant in America, and my
mum is who SHE was and always a strong, outgoing woman, so I got to see all these
different sides.
CrankyCritic:
Do you have a rebellious streak?
Liv Tyler: I don't really have anything to rebel against. What is rebellion?
I don't want to rebel against myself. But I try and be free.
CrankyCritic: I know you love working with interesting directors. Was
that one of the reasons you decided to do Lord of the Rings?
Liv Tyler: I love Peter Jackson, yeah.
CrankyCritic: What was the Rings experience like?
Liv Tyler: Great, very long. It's very hard to talk about in a few short
minutes because it was a year and a half, it was so much you know?
CrankyCritic: Have you seen any of it yet?
Liv Tyler: Peter was very sweet and smart. He screened some footage twice.
Once from the beginning, like halfway through and then once at the very end just
one everyone needed that little push to get through to the last month or two and
he showed us 35 cut minutes. It was such a beautiful thing to see. We were all
like crying and clapping and standing up, feeling so inspired when we saw it,
because everyone worked so hard on it.