Liv Tyler’s London life

Liv Tyler steps back in time for a new role in the period drama Harlots as Lady Isabella Fitzwilliam. She tells Jim Maloney about her on-set costume dilemma and why her family gives her so much pleasure.

Appearing in a British period drama or changing her accent is nothing new for United States actress Liv Tyler.

“I’ve done it so many times now,” says Tyler, whose screen credits include The Lord Of The Rings trilogy, Stealing Beauty and the mini-series Gunpowder.

Tyler, 41, is joining the cast of Harlots for its current second season as high society’s Lady Isabella Fitzwilliam.

Set in 18th-century London, Harlots centres on the vicious rivalry between struggling madam Margaret Wells (Samantha Morton) and her upper-class counterpart Lydia Quigley (Lesley Manville).

“Lydia Quigley is sort of blackmailing her (Lady Fitzwilliam) and part of the story is finding out what Lady Fitz’s secret is and what is motivating her,” says Tyler of her character.

Dressing as nobility for a period piece may seem like good fun but for Tyler it was, at times, challenging.

“My costumes are very grand,” she says. “They are big on the hips. I have a metal cage underneath and I can’t walk through a doorway in the normal fashion.

“Sometimes I forget and bump into the frame. I have to go in sideways, like a crab.

“At night when I get home I take everything off and put a tracksuit on and I am very grateful for the freedoms of modern dressing.”

The ‘home’ she is referring to is the West London townhouse she shares with her fiance, sports agent David Gardner, and their two

children – Sailor, three, and Lula, two, as well as her elder son, Milo, 13, from her marriage to British musician Royston Langdon and Gardner’s son, Grey, 11, from a previous relationship.

“It’s quite nice in a way when you have young children to still be working because if you cut yourself off completely then it’s harder to get back,” says Tyler.

“I am continuing to work because it feels beneficial but my head right now is very much with my children and I just love being with them.

“My greatest motivation has always been to have a family and I get the greatest pleasure out of that.

“I always really wanted to be a mum and to be a family because I had such an eccentric upbringing. I lived with my mum for a while and my aunt for a while and my grandma and I had two dads.”

Tyler was raised by her aunt and uncle in rural Maine and by her grandmother in Virginia.

At age nine she discovered the man she always thought was her father, wasn’t. She discovered her real father was Aerosmith frontman Steven Tyler, who had a fling with her model mother, Bebe Buell.

When Liv Tyler was 12 she moved to Manhattan to live with Buell.

“I felt like I was kind of guided into a path, in a way, of modelling and then acting which at the time I was kind of annoyed by because I just wanted to be with my friends,” she says.

“But it sort of found me and through it I found myself, which was an amazing thing, and I felt very grateful for that.

“I didn’t really have any classic acting training but it was something that was really important for me and is still very important for me to express myself and find myself.”

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