Liv Tyler's moving relationship with her adoptive dad Todd Rundgren explored
17 April 2025, 15:14 | Updated: 23 April 2025, 17:42
The Lord of the Rings actress discovered Aerosmith frontman Steven Tyler was her biological father at an early age.
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Liv Tyler shares a moving bond with her adoptive father Todd Rundgren, one she has kept since discovering the rockstar identity of her biological father.
Speaking with Kate and Oliver Hudson on their podcast Sibling Revelry in April 2025, the Lord of the Rings star opened up about how she has always seen Todd as her dad even though the pair don’t share a biological connection.
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“I love him. I have brothers from him and I had a whole family with them. He took care of me like he was [my] dad,” the 47-year-old said.
Hollywood actress Liv grew up raised by her mum, Playboy model Bebe Buell, and her long-term partner, rock musician Todd.
Although Liv was actually the child of a short fling Bebe had with Aerosmith frontman Steven Tyler, her mother chose to hide this fact due to Steven’s issues with drug addiction at the time.
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Even after Bebe and Todd’s on-again-off-again 70s relationship had come to an end, Todd committed to raising Liv as his own.
“As the story goes, [Bebe] called Todd and said she was pregnant and he asked her to come home to where they lived in Woodstock in upstate New York,” Liv explained to Kate and Oliver.
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“He very courageously and lovingly said: ‘This child needs a father and I will be the father.’
“It’s very cute,” Liv reflected, adding: “I was born Liv Rundgren.”
Growing up, Liv began to work out her real heritage as she realised the similarities she shared with Steven, and his other daughter Mia.
Liv’s mother revealed the truth about her father to her daughter at a concert when she was around 11 or 12, the actress recalled.
“The first wave was a shock. After that concert, we went home and my mom had a chaise lounge in front of a window.
“I remember sitting there for what felt like three days, but it was probably three hours, and coming to this conclusion of ‘Whoa, I have two dads and all this love.’”
Todd and Steven have gone on to both share a father-daughter relationship with Liv.
“I was able to soak up the love that I could,” Liv spoke of her later childhood. “I just was really excited about it because they’re all so different and so lovely.”
Speaking about how immediately connected she felt to Steven as a child, Liv told The Guardian in 2017: “I felt a connection in a very strong way when I met him as a little girl, and I didn’t know why at first, but I figured it out rather quickly.”
But her relationship with Steven never affected her relationship with Todd.
“I’m so grateful to Todd for choosing to be a father figure to me. It’s a big thing for a man to say, ‘I know this kid might not be mine, but I still want to be her father,’” she continued.
“Although he and my mom weren’t together, he was always a very stable, loving force in my life.”
Liv described both of her fathers as “unconventional... like unicorns or wizards.”
She also reflected: “Their eccentricities have made me more practical and more normal, in a way.”
