Liv Tyler finds it tough being immortal

For Hollywood star Liv Tyler, it's tough being immortal.

"It must be such a drag being 3000 years old. What a burden - the aching bones," she said, reflecting on her role as the elf princess Arwen, who lives forever in the latest Lord of the Rings movie.

"It was hard as an actor to get your head around these characters who are so perfect and wise," she said of her part in The Two Towers, which will be released in Wellington - and worldwide - on December 18.

"I feel very proud of the film," she said of the second movie in the trilogy that brings to life the magical world of Middle-earth from J.R.R. Tolkien's classic.

"But it was hard to be an elf and to be in Tolkien's world," she told French journalists as a promotional tour for the film's European premiere reached Paris.

Travelling the world to give the film a publicity boost has offered Tyler some intriguing contrasts.

"New York audiences participate and cheer in the exciting bits. They get involved. In England, they are silent. Nobody talks."

The three movies were filmed back-to-back in New Zealand over 18 months by director Peter Jackson. The project cost US$300 million ($596 million) and the first movie, The Fellowship of the Ring, has already made US$860 million ($1708 million) at the box office.

For much of the young cast, making the movies involved bonding. Actors would travel around Asia together on their time off from shooting in New Zealand. But not Tyler.

"When I wasn't shooting, I would go home. I was kinda homesick. They were young and wild and wanted to check out the world."

Now Tyler wants to move on to something musical, although the daughter of Aerosmith frontman Steve Tyler and rock "supergroupie" Bebe Buell is not ready to give up the day job yet - even if she does live with Royston Langdon, lead singer with the group Spacehog.

"I have sung on a couple of my friends' records and I do little fun things. But I would not know where to begin with writing a song," she confessed.

"And if you left me in a room with a guitar, I wouldn't know what to do.

"When I was a kid, all I wanted to be was a singer. I didn't know anything about acting because I grew up around musicians," she said of her eccentric, bohemian upbringing.

She originally thought her father was rock star Todd Rundgren. "I didn't get my lineage sorted out until I was 10."

The music is still clearly in the genes, and her big acting ambition is to make a musical.

"I have always wanted to be in a musical. Sweet Charity is one of my favourites. I can't wait to see Chicago when it comes out."

- REUTERS

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