Liv Tyler on The Ledge, Battles of the Sexes and Lord of the Rings at 10

You're in relatively few films these days -- maybe one a year. Do you consider yourself to be more selective than you were, say, 10 or 15 years ago?

In the time since I had my son -- he's 6 now -- it's been an incredible passion of mine to be his mother and to be around for him. I've always found it really hard to know how to go away for huge chunks of time and completely give over to that experience of playing another person living in another place. And I've done it kind of on-and-off since he was born, and have also had kind of an amazing luxury of financially being OK from other things. I wasn't always having to work on a film to make money. I've had a cosmetics contract with Givenchy for eight years, which has been great and was really part of a conscious decision on my part to be able to be present in his life. I'm still always traveling and working, but it was that thing of being so focused on the things that were going on in my life that I couldn't leave them to go off and make films in the same way I could when I was younger -- when I didn't have anything else going on.

And now I feel like I really want to be working more and working again on movies. I'm just like any other single mom, I guess, trying to figure out the balance of all of that and how that works. It's definitely been easier for me to go to Paris for two weeks and shoot a commercial for Givenchy with Darren Aronofsky for mascara for a day, and do a couple other things and have an amazing experience and then come back home than it is for me to go off and make a movie for a month or two and uproot us. Or not be around my son. I've been sort of trying to figure that out.

We're about 10 years removed from the whole Lord of the Rings phenomenon. What's your relationship with that phenomenon and the culture around it?

Oh my God. It was just such a big part of my life. I think of it so fondly. I sometimes think, "I can't believe that happened." That was such an extraordinary experience making those films, looking back on it now. I knew it at the time, but it was such an experiment and so risky in so many ways and done with so much passion and love. I'm still friends with a lot of people from Weta who I worked with. Just as a whole, I was completely floored by that whole situation. I enjoyed every second of it and was so proud of the success it was.

Is it true that you had a swordfighting scene cut from one of the movies?

Well, originally, Arwyn was part of the Fellowship at one point. There was this whole series. I think we even shot a couple of scenes where she was in Helm's Deep. I was there sort of training and horseback riding and swordfighting and doing all this stuff, and I never felt good about it. It's funny when I think back; I never felt totally right about it. And then we all decided together -- we agreed that we didn't want to go in that direction. We completely reapproached her. [Co-screenwriters] Fran [Walsh] and Philippa [Boyens] decided they would go back in the appendix and really sort of cultivate this sort of love story out of that. She didn't have to go out and do that. They just created this whole new thing just to have her in the story -- to fix what wasn't working or right. So that's what happened. And I was really happy about it.

You were?

Obviously I didn't have as much to do, but it just felt right. It felt really right to take the nature of this beautiful love story that these two characters had -- which was so powerful and so incredible -- and embellish it and lay that throughout those three films. [Pauses] I'm going to eat a Gummi Bear now.

Go for it. This is random, but do you stay in touch with Alicia Silverstone?

I saw her at a Halloween party a year or two ago in L.A. It was so nice to see her.

She just had a kid, right?

I think so. I don't have her number. I haven't seen her a lot. But I enjoy seeing her when I do see her.

How many times today have you been asked how you think your father did as a judge on American Idol?

Um, probably about 30 times. Almost everyone! Someone started to say, "Lastly, I've got one more question that's a little bit off subject..." And I almost said on television, "Oh, let me guess: You're going to ask me about my dad." And I stopped myself! I bit my tongue, and amazingly he asked me an amazingly different, shocking question about Bruce Lee, which was amazing, and which I didn't have an answer for. But I thought, "Thank God I didn't say that." But I don't mind talking about it.

OK, so how do you think your dad did on American Idol? Did you even watch it before he was on there?

I'd only seen it maybe... I don't watch a lot of television in general, but I'd seen it maybe a couple of times before I saw him on it. I enjoyed it tremendously. It was very exciting to tune in weekly and see my dad on television. A very interesting experience -- sort of strange. But I feel really happy for him and proud of him that he was able to, at this moment in his life, try something completely new and foreign to him that he'd never done before, and be so naturally good at it. By just being himself! With his amazing, bizarre language and personality and this sort of magic that he has. To have a whole nation of people fall in love with him is really interesting to see, you know? All different ages and different walks of life come up to me and say, "I love your dad. He's so amazing." And I say, "Thank you!" Because it's just that person I've known for my whole life.

Pages: 1 2