Liv Tyler: Living It Up!

Liv Tyler on bonding with Orlando and dad Steven, overcoming middle-Earth depression and making a movie with Bennifer.

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Though her reign as elf princess ended with the completion of the Lord of the Rings trilogy, Liv Tyler is having trouble shaking herself out of Middle-earth.

Spending much of the last few years in New Zealand shows when she meets me in lower Manhattan and we walk to a bar where she can order a pint of pale ale--even though she's just begun a post-New Year's diet. Tyler settles on an English cider, which she says is "like beer, but with a kick," and she doesn't miss a beat when we are interrupted by a woman who'd been watching us and waiting for a moment to approach. As she tells Tyler how big a fan she is, the woman leans over and rubs the actress' arm.

"I can't figure out what it is about me, but everybody touches me," Tyler says later. "People come right up and pat me, rub me, pinch me. Is it like I'm some kind of cute puppy to be petted? When they start drinking, they really get going, trying to stroke me. I'm like, what are you doing?"

The 26-year-old Tyler has been touching directors for years. Tyler is model tall, but her beauty is grounded by a sweetness that comes through in her breathy voice. Or the way that, despite being the spokeswoman for the haute couture house Givenchy, she comes to talk wearing an old salmon-colored overcoat--and Chuck Taylor Converse sneakers that she calls her most reliable wardrobe staple because they don't make her seem intimidatingly tall.

Filmmakers have been hooked on Tyler since the 16-year-old made an audacious video debut in "Crazy," the Aerosmith hit. It was a song sung by her father, Steven Tyler, who declared himself her dad when Tyler was 10--she had been raised to believe her dad was another rock frontman, Todd Rundgren. Since then, the lot of directors who've fallen in love with the tall blue-eyed beauty with the generous lips include Bernardo Bertolucci, Robert Altman, Tom Hanks, Peter Jackson and Kevin Smith, who's made her the centerpiece of his new film Jersey Girl.

Jersey Girl was the only film Tyler had time to make between Rings blockbusters. She also found time to marry longtime rock singer boyfriend Royston Langdon, 31, and buy and renovate an 1861 house in downtown Manhattan. She relishes the chance to be reappraised in a contemporary film and begins work on the Steve Buscemi-directed Lonesome Jim later this year, playing a single mother.

Smith has been arguing since last summer that Jersey Girl is not another Gigli just because Ben Affleck and Jennifer Lopez are in it. (J.Lo's character dies shortly after the film starts.) The director insists the pivotal role is the one played by Tyler, a woman who tries to heal the grieving young widower and his daughter. It's Tyler's second on-screen romance with Affleck, though Smith said he was hardly looking for an Armageddon reprise.

"I kidded Liv and Ben all the time about their decided lack of chemistry in Armageddon, but there is heat and a freshness between them in Jersey Girl," Smith says. "She is sublime and brought something to her performance that wasn't there when I wrote her character. Like the way she put this geeky little chuckle in every time her character delivers these tepid little zinger lines to Ben. It was insanely charming, made you fall in love with her, and though I am happily married, the whole movie I was saying I'd leave my wife for her."

MICHAEL FLEMING: Jersey Girl is your second teaming with Ben Affleck. All the attention has gone to the fact that Jennifer Lopez is in the film, and director Kevin Smith has spent an inordinate amount of time convincing people this is not Gigli 2. Was the Bennifer backlash evident during filming?

LIV TYLER: I'm no Ben and Jen expert. I mention I'm in Jersey Girl and everybody says, "Give me all the dirt on Ben and Jen." I'm the worst, I don't know anything. I didn't even see Gigli, so I don't know what all the fuss is about. I did Jersey Girl to work with Kevin.

Q: Had Ben changed much? All this Bennifer stuff must have hardened him.

A: When we made Armageddon, he was this skinny Bostonian who had to get in shape and be that sex symbol superhero Michael Bay wanted. I remember him coming to my trailer saying Michael made him stand there while they poured water over his naked torso. And Michael covered my tummy in oil for that animal cracker scene with Ben. It wasn't something either of us was used to. Ben is used to being a movie star now. I enjoy working with him. We have a chemistry that I haven't felt with another actor.

Q: You completed The Lord of the Rings as the most famous blockbuster trilogy princess since Carrie Fisher in Star Wars. Is there more pressure from the heightened fame?

A: I've always been paparazzi'd all over my neighborhood, and you just hope it's not when you're doing something like scooping your dog's poop. They've been there pretty much every vacation my husband and I have ever been on. Except when we got married, which we managed to pull off in complete privacy.

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