FEATURE LIV TYLER
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The warm reception that has greeted Bernardo Bertolucci’s Stealing Beauty in America seems sure to make a star of nineteen- year-old Liv Tyler. Still caught in a whirlwind of success, she talks to Nigel Floyd as the film comes to the Film Festival.
hen director James Mangold auditioned Liv Tyler for his low- budget, independent movie Heavy, his reaction to her leggy, angular beauty was instinctive and immediate: ‘l called my agent and said, “l’ve just met a movie star.” She hadn’t done any stuff, but i couldn’t stop watching her - just listening to me talking, or pottering about the room. 1 had complete confidence in her ability to charm the shit out of Victor [the film’s plump protagonist] and the audience.‘
However, despite starring roles in Silent Fall and Empire Records, the nineteen-year-old model-tumed-actress was still best known for her appearance in the pop video ‘Crazy’, made for her father Steve Tyler's band, Aerosmith. That is, until Bernardo Bertolucci cast her as Lucy in Stealing Beauty, the story of a teenage American girl whose holiday at an idyllic Tuscan villa peopled by her recently deceased mother’s arty, ex-pat friends becomes a search for her emotional and sexual self.
At the Cannes Film Festival earlier this year, Tyler’s sharp cheek-boned face smiled pensiveiy from posters all along La Croisette. Tired and hoarse after a prolonged interview stint, she’s still remarkably animated, if a little
‘When I arrived at Nice airport, as soon as we landed, all these paparazzi were running alongside me, taking pictures as l wheeled my baggage cart through. it was so shocking, it just made me laugh.’ .
fazed, by her new-found celebrity. ‘lt’s really incredible to see the poster around everywhere,’ she says, ‘but it just feels really weird and alien. When i arrived at Nice airport, as soon as we landed, all these paparazzi were running alongside me, taking pictures as l wheeled my baggage cart through. it was so shocking, it just made me laugh.’
Although she squeals in protest and says she regrets ever having said it, Tyler reluctantly admits that, yes, she did enjoy playing Lucy lhi lyler: stealing the show because, unlike some of her previous roles, she
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12 The List l6-22 Aug i996