Liv Tyler

Tyler was born Liv Rundgren on July 1, 1977, in New York City at Mount Sinai Hospital. She is the only daughter of Bebe Buell, a model, singer, and former Playboy Playmate (Miss November 1974), and Steven Tyler, the lead singer of Aerosmith. Her mother named her after Norwegian actress Liv Ullmann, after seeing Ullmann on the cover of the March 5, 1977, issue of TV Guide. Her ancestry includes Italian (from her great-grandfather), Polish, German, English and African-American (from her paternal 4th great-grandfather). Tyler has three half-siblings: Mia Tyler (born 1978), Chelsea Anna Tyler Foster (née Tallarico; born 1989), and Taj Monroe Tallarico (born 1991). Her maternal grandmother, Dorothea Johnson, founded the Protocol School of Washington.

From 1972 to 1979, Buell lived with rock musician Todd Rundgren. In 1976, Buell became pregnant from a brief relationship with Steven Tyler. She gave birth on July 1, 1977, naming the daughter Liv Rundgren and claiming that Todd Rundgren was the biological father because Tyler was in the middle of his well-documented drug excesses. Liv told People Magazine in 1992 that "Todd's my spiritual father. I love him". By then Rundgren and Buell had ended their romantic relationship but Rundgren nevertheless signed the birth certificate and acted as a father figure to Liv, including paying for her education.

At age 10 or 11, Liv met Steven Tyler and suspected he was her father when she observed the resemblance between him and herself. When she asked her mother, the secret was revealed. The truth about Tyler's paternity did not become public until 1991, when she changed her surname from Rundgren to Tyler, but kept Rundgren as a middle name. Buell's stated reason for claiming that Rundgren was Liv's father was that Steven Tyler was too heavily addicted to drugs at the time of Liv's birth. Since learning the truth about her paternity, Liv and Steven have developed a close relationship. They also have worked together professionally, once when she appeared in Aerosmith's music video for "Crazy" in 1993, and again when Aerosmith performed songs in the film Armageddon (1998), in which Liv starred. Tyler maintains a close relationship with Rundgren. "I'm so grateful to him, I have so much love for him. You know, when he holds me it feels like Daddy. And he's very protective and strong."

Tyler attended the Congressional School of Virginia, Breakwater School, and Waynflete School in Portland, Maine, before returning to New York City with her mother at age 12. She went to York Preparatory in New York City for junior high and high school after her mother researched the school to accommodate Tyler's ADHD. She also attended the Crossroads School for Arts & Sciences in Santa Monica, California. She graduated from York in 1995 and left to continue her acting career. When asked about her youth, Tyler said: "For me, I didn't get much of a childhood in my teen years because I've been working since I was 14. But that also kept me out of trouble. When everybody was doing acid and partying like crazy, I was at work on a movie in Tuscany ... having my own fun, of course, but it was a different kind of thing. I have no regrets. I love the way my life has gone."