Liv Tyler was a little confused as a child - but it all seems to be working out nicely now.
Tyler - who can been seen in Plunkett And Macleane, which opens today - was born on July 1, 1977, in Portland, Maine. Her mother, Bebe Buell, was a former model, Playboy playmate and frequenter of many a backstage party. Her father was, well, a mystery. For most of her young life, Tyler was under the impression that rocker Todd Rundgren was her dad. But that, of course, could not explain how she had been blessed with a unique and quite astonishing set of lips. Then one day she had a long, hard look at family friend Steve Tyler (right, with Liv), lead singer of Aerosmith and fellow possessor of a unique and quite astonishing set of lips. And the mystery was solved. She took up the Tyler name and, at the age of 14, hot-footed it to New York with her mum with the dream of launching a modelling career.
Backed by two famous parents and her looks, Tyler found work on the catwalks and her face on the cover of magazines. But it wasn't too long before she caught the acting bug.
Her first chance came in Aussie director Bruce Beresford's 1994 effort Silent Fall, alongside Hollywood veterans Richard Dreyfuss and Linda Hamilton. At the same time she read for director James Mangold, who was casting Heavy - his tale of a very strange pizza maker. So impressed was Mangold that he put off filming Heavy for a year until Tyler was available. It was a wise move, as the film helped launch her career and made a star of the pizza maker (Pruitt Taylor Vince). In Bernardo Bertolucci's 1996 Stealing Beauty she acted, alongside Jeremy Irons, as a virginal young American in Tuscany looking for her real father, echoing her real life.
Her presence was magnetic and Tyler has remained in the public eye since, with roles in U-Turn (1997), Armageddon (1998) and last year's Cookie's Fortune directed by Robert Altman. Along the way she has also been voted - by People magazine - as one of the world's 50 most beautiful people and has counted Joaquin Phoenix among her suitors.