15-Year-Old Liv Tyler With Mom Bebe Buell Photographed by David McGough in 1993

Bebe Buell is an American singer and former fashion model. She was Playboy magazine’s November 1974 Playmate of the Month. 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. 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 a resemblance between her and Tyler’s daughter Mia. 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 Tyler 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.”

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.”