Getty Images
Liv Tyler is headlining a new action-drama on FOX called 911: Lone Star, a spinoff from the original 911. This television series is just her latest project in a career that spans a quarter-century. After a short modeling career, she got her start acting in her father Steven Tyler’s music videos — for Aerosmith’s “Amazing” and “Crazy” — and the mid-1990s films Silent Fall, Heavy, and Empire Records.
She went on to star in Armageddon, Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings films, The Leftovers, and Harlots, earning great praise for her work on The Leftovers in particular.
Along the way, however, she has also gotten married, started a family, and moved to London. Here’s what to know about her family and children.
1. Liv Tyler Considers Two Men to Be Her Father
Getty Images
While she shares her last name with her biological father, rocker Steven Tyler, Liv really has two fathers — Tyler and her adoptive father, musician Todd Rundgren. Liv’s mother, Bebe Buell, was a model in the 1970s who dated Rundgren from 1972 to 1978. But she had a brief relationship with Steven Tyler and gave birth to Liv in 1977.
However, at the time, Buell said that Rundgren was Liv’s biological father and gave her his last name in order to protect Liv from Steven Tyler’s then-drug addiction. Buell and Rundgren separated a year after Liv was born and Liv didn’t find out that Tyler is her biological father until she was nine years old.
“I’m so grateful to Todd [Rundgren] for choosing to be a father figure to me. It’s a big thing for a man to say, ‘I know this kid might not be mine, but I still want to be her father.’ Although he and my mom weren’t together, he was always a very stable, loving force in my life,” Liv told The Guardian in a 2017 interview, adding, “When I realized that Steven was my father, it was a moment that was bigger than me, it was almost spiritual. When you meet kin, there is an energy and sparkle between your bodies. 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.”
2. Liv’s First Husband Is the Lead Singer of Spacehog
Getty Images
Liv famously dated Joaquin Phoenix in the mid-1990s, but then in 1998, she began dating the lead singer and bassist of British glam rock band Spacehog, Royston Langdon. They got engaged in 2001 and married in Barbados in 2003. Liv and Royston welcomed a son in December 2004, Milo William Langdon, but they split in 2008.
At the time, a source told US Weekly (via Access Hollywood) that they overheard Tyler talking on the phone about her marriage, calling her husband a “leech” on her assets and saying she “got married too young.” Liv then took a couple of years off to concentrate on raising her son.
“I took a little time off before [filming] Super and The Ledge. I just had a rough couple of years, having Milo and then getting divorced and trying to rebuild my life again,” Liv told Bust Magazine in 2011 (via The Daily Mail), adding, “Milo and I have been in such transition – I’ve been rebuilding and trying to be patient. And I’ve just put all of my focus on that. Because I can’t go to work and be happy unless he’s happy and feels secure.”
She added that the “loss of a dream” is “quite painful,” but “quite liberating at the same time” because you “have to let go of that ideal and see yourself in an imperfect light.”
3. Liv’s Second Partner Is David Beckham’s Best Friend
Getty Images
In 2014, Liv met David Gardner, a sports/entertainment manager from England who boasts soccer player David Beckham as one of his closest friends and clients. Liv and Gardner got engaged and welcomed their first child together the following year. But they have yet to tie the knot and Liv says that’s the way she likes it.
“I love being engaged, but I don’t really have a desire to get married,” she told Tatler magazine in an August 2019 interview. “I always felt like marriage should be more of a reward… for surviving your relationship… I feel everyone’s got it backwards.”
And while she loves the British social scene with her husband, she recently confessed to British paper The Sun that she’s still not into football (soccer), even with Beckham being godfather to their children.
“I’ve been to lots of games with David [Gardner] and he’s told me loads of football stories and introduced me to some amazingly talented players, although I sometimes don’t know who they are,” says Liv. “My partner lives for football and his family and all his friends love it. For me it’s so different to watching American football, I just don’t get it.”
4. Liv and David Have Four Children in Total
Liv and David welcomed their first child together, Sailor Gene, in February 2015, and then welcomed their second child together, Lula Rosa, in July 2016. Sailor and Lula actually starred in a 2017 GAP spot that Liv wrote and directed called “Mama Said,” filmed to support Every Mother Counts, an organization that works to make pregnancy and childbirth safe for every mother, everywhere.
Liv and David also have Milo, 16, from Liv’s marriage to Langdon and David has a son, Gray, 12, from his marriage to British actress and socialite Davinia Taylor. Liv told The Guardian in 2017 that she loved getting the family all under one roof in London, where they moved together several years ago.
“I’m celebrating my new family coming together … We’ve gone on this crazy adventure together of blending our families and moving to London. It’s beautiful,” said Tyler. But she also recently told the 2020 Television Critics Association winter press tour audience that it was a big decision for her to take on 911: Lone Star because she lives overseas.
“I live in London and I have a large family and this was a huge thing for me. And honestly, it was the character. I completely fell in love with her and I was really taken aback by I had an immediate reaction to her nurturing,” says Liv, adding, “And I was really interested in the lives of these first responders and these people. … When we go in and watch them and do training and go on runs and watch them in the call rooms and it’s just it’s incredible. They are superheroes, and I was really interested in that and this team of people.”
5. Liv’s Father Steven Has a Surprising Connection to 911: Lone Star
Getty Images
During the same TCA winter press tour panel for 911: Lone Star, Liv was asked what Steven Tyler thinks of her new show and her co-star Rob Lowe cracked a joke, “He’s no stranger to paramedics,” to which Liv fired back, “My dad has nine lives,” referring to Steven Tyler’s past struggles with drug use.
But that led into Lowe sharing a really touching story about his own sobriety and the part Steven Tyler played in it; Tyler famously got sober in the mid-1990s after his manager demanded he go to rehab.
“So I’ve been sober now going on 30 years. But when I first got sober, my thought was my life is over. Like, the fun is done and I’m not going to be cool anymore,” says Lowe. “And I came home. I was probably sober two or three weeks, maybe, and I got a phone call from Steven Tyler, who I did not know. And he called me and he said, ‘I heard you’re in recovery and I just wanted to say hey and it’s going to be great.’ And I thought, dude, you know if it’s good enough for f*cking Steven Tyler, it’s good enough for me. So he was a big part of who I am today.”
911: Lone Star premieres Sunday, January 19 at 10 p.m. ET/7 p.m. PT on FOX, then moves to its regular time slot of Mondays at 8 p.m. ET/PT on FOX starting January 20.
READ NEXT: How to Watch ‘911: Lone Star’ Online