Liv Tyler Takes a Break

Chapter 1

Historical note:

The stardom of actress and ex-model Liv Tyler, daughter of Aerosmith singer Steven Tyler, has long since faded, but when this story was written in 2002 she was 24 years old, tall and striking, and recently engaged to the British rock singer and bassist Royston Langdon, who also plays a part in the story along with Mia, her half-sister and plus-size model. Here is a quote from a newspaper gossip column from January 2nd that year. This is the newspaper item that inspired me:

“Liv Tyler was delighted when the 15-month long ‘Lord Of The Rings’ shoot ended as it meant that she didn’t have to watch what she ate like a hawk. The 5ft 10 inch actress had to keep her weight to just 126 pounds while playing Arwen in the trio but started piling on the pounds when filming was over – putting on 28 Ibs. ‘Now I'm fat but happy. I was sick and tired of starving myself to look thin. It was no fun. I feel more comfortable at this weight – and I’m enjoying my food. I don’t care what people think. There shouldn’t be a standard for how we should all look,’ she told reporters.”


***

She sunk her teeth slowly into the bun. She took her time. She wanted to savour everything: the taste, the texture, even the smell. Above all she wanted the expectation, the sense of knowing that any second the teeth would emerge from the soft, yielding bread and crash through the lettuce into the sliced tomatoes. That reached, she knew she stood on the doorstep to paradise: she was only one bite, one half a second, away from the thick smear of ketchup and the circle of chopped meat, fried and frizzed into perfection – the heart of the matter. Liv Tyler was eating a hamburger.

“And that is the first thing you feel like eating?” her boyfriend Royston Langdon had remarked, eyes widening fast. She’d nodded, grinning like a child. “I’m an American girl,” she’d said, “I’m back on American soil. And I’m starving.”

All of this was true. She had just returned home from the biggest acting assignment in her short charmed life, shooting the film versions of “The Lord of the Rings” in far-off New Zealand. In so many ways she was grateful to have been cast: her part as the elf princess Arwen may have been small but here was a major, major project, three movies shot all at once, guaranteeing blockbuster exposure across the world for three years in a row. And the money! And the residuals! This she knew would give her career a tremendous boost. And yet, to be shooting for fifteen continuous months, far from friends and loved ones, to be on call week after week, stuck in the same costumes, the same hairstyle: that was the hard part.

Stuck at the same weight too. That was the hardest part of all. “You mustn’t gain weight,” the director Peter Jackson had told her; “I know it’s inhuman, but this is the movies. No fluctuations allowed. We can’t have you slim in Part One, and a chubbybum in Part Two. Besides, you’re playing an elf. I’ve never heard of a fat elf. Sorry if I sound blunt,” he’d said, “but I’m from New Zealand. That’s how we are.” It had even been written into her contract: during shooting she had to maintain a weight of 126 pounds, or face financial penalties. “It’s for your own sake, Liv,” her agent had told her, “you know you have a tendency to gain.”

She’d sighed. She’d buckled down to it. She’d eaten like a mouse. For this she’d had years of practise, suppressing her natural appetite, shaving down her five-foot ten-inch body to a conventional beauty machine fit for fashion photographers, movie cameramen, and the eyes of the world. Fast food was banished. Scarcely any alcohol. Slimline this and that. Day after day, month after month.

Until this moment. In her ears she could still hear the director’s cry of “And it’s a wrap!”: the cry that said her torment was over, that she could rest, relax, and join the rest of the human race. So, finally at her home in the Hollywood hills, she was doing just that. She had ordered a takeaway. It had just arrived.

And now, she thought, it was time for the French fries. Bronzed, glistening with salt and calories, they tumbled over the edge of their cardboard container, a portion of coleslaw and sachets of ketchup lined up alongside.To Liv, even the cardboard looked good enough to eat. She picked out a few fries with her fingers, wafted their aroma under her nose, then led them gently into her mouth. Her teeth crunched down. “Oh-h-h-h,” she murmured. She chewed slowly. She was in ecstasy.

And then the drink. She had ordered two 7-Ups: silly, she knew, as there was bound to be some in the fridge already. But she wanted the complete take-out experience. She needed those bubbles zinging through her system. And a chocolate milkshake: how she’d craved over the months for its luxurious kick, for the feeling it gave of drowning in bliss. She thrust her straw through the container, sucked, and saw the brown slurp rising inexorably into her mouth – her private kingdom once again, where no movie director could dictate who or what went in or out. She wanted to keep it that way.

Liv flashed her searchlight smile. She was home at last. She was free.

****

“And then I think I’ll have the sea bass. That’s a big fish isn’t it, Anton? I want something big. Does it come with French fries?”

“For you, Ms Tyler, it can come with the Taj Mahal.” Anton lightly bowed his head.

Liv glanced around at her favourite Beverly Hills restaurant, the Blue Parrot. “Oh it’s so good to be back!” she cried. And she beamed at the waiter, at her agent Sandy, sitting opposite, and beyond them at the whole world.

“I have this script,” Sandy was saying as Anton scuttled away.

“Sandy, I’m on sabbatical. On vacation. Taking time out.” She stroked the handles of her knife and fork, anxious to get them working.

“I know, I know, but I’m getting pressure. They’ll go with someone else. You’ve been back a month now. Couldn’t you just read a few pages? It’s a lot of fun. You go the moon with Johnny Depp…”

But as she looked into Liv’s face she knew her client wasn’t really listening. She sensed something else as well. She couldn’t find Liv’s usual cheekbones. They weren’t there. The face was smoother, rounder. Damn it, she thought, she’s put on a bit of weight.

“This script, Liv –”

But Liv’s mind was elsewhere. She was thinking ahead, beyond the Caesar salad shortly to come, beyond the sea bass, to the Blue Parrot’s desserts. Was this going to be a pecan pie day? She visualised the nuts squatting an inch thick on the pie’s crust, jostling each other, edged in by succulent, sticky goo. She imagined her teeth cracking down on the wedge and opening up the pie’s glories – the clash of textures, hard and soft, the richness, the heaviness. Above all, she looked forward to enjoying something she’d been taught was sinful, something her body would regret.

Liv stroked her stomach absentmindedly. “You didn’t happen to see what the dessert specials were, did you?” Her agent’s look suggested an explanation was necessary. “I’m so hungry these days,” she said with a giggle, “but I’m just letting things ride.”

From across the table, Sandy considered Liv’s breasts and tried to estimate her waistline. Was that the outline of a midriff roll or just an innocent crease in her sweater? She didn’t want to make an issue of this.

“Liv, enjoy your vacation, but just remember, you’ve got to go back before the cameras one day. You’ll have publicity to do, the Tonight Show – ”

“One day,” she said, dreamily, “a long way off”. Her eyes lit up. Anton had arrived with the Caesar salad.

****

Liv put the book aside and laid back in her lounging chair by the pool. In the two months since she’d returned from New Zealand she’d been through her Harold Robbins paperbacks, survived one chapter of “Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance”, and was now embarked on the poems of Rod McKuen. She’d read one at a time, savouring the words slowly and the thoughts that lay within them – thoughts simple but profound, about love and nature, and being oneself.

“His stuff’s so beautiful, Royston. He should be our Poet Laureate. Listen to this: “I am the poem. The poem is me.””

Royston, still a little the worse from carousing the night before, was carrying a tray of drinks – three bottled beers for him, 7-Ups and a margarita for her – and looked at his girlfriend, long and luscious, sunning herself, naked except for her bikini. “Beautiful?” He belched involuntarily. “You’re the beautiful one.”

“That would sound much better, Royston, if you hadn’t belched inbetween.”

“Sorry. That’s what comes of being in a rock band.” Suddenly, his eyes were drawn to the gentle curve of flesh on her midriff. As she sat up to reach her margarita the flesh buckled and bulged, forming two comfortable rolls of fat sandwiched between her thighs and breasts. “Hey,” he said, admiringly, “you’re putting on some weight. You’re getting quite a little tummy!”

Liv glanced down at the fruits of her increased food intake. “Do you mind?” she said. She fingered the flesh around her belly-button. She’d known for weeks she was putting on weight; even if she had never looked in a mirror or stood on the scales she would have felt her body steadily softening and rounding out as she soaped herself down in the shower, applied suntan lotion, or zipped up her favourite slacks. The last time she stood on the scales, the dial told her she weighed 140 pounds: an amount that would have meant she was booted off “Lord of Rings” for good or at least got her stomach stitched. Now, she reasoned, the fourteen extra pounds were neither here or there – except, that is, on her softened stomach, her widening thighs, and the breasts just starting to march out into the world. She had no engagements. No cameras were prying. She didn’t mind the new pounds at all. But did Royston?

“No, honey,” he said, “I don’t mind. There’s more of you to love.” He kissed her on the cheek, sat down beside her, ripped open a can, and settled into his own reading matter – a supermarket tabloid.

“Tell me if you want any help with the long words,” Liv said with her delicious high giggle. Then she leaned back in her chair, closed her eyes, rested her hands on her tummy, pressed a finger lightly into the fat, and purred with contentment. The sun beat down. Time stretched out benignly before her. Peter Jackson and the Wellington studios of “Lord of the Rings” were far away. There was nothing to do, nothing to hurry for.

Royston suddenly thrust the tabloid in front of her. “What’s this word?”

She peered briefly, then handed the paper back. “Liposuction.”

A light switched on in Royston’s head. “Ah,” he said. Then he smiled broadly.

Liv looked at him out of the corner of her eyes. “You were joking, right?”

“Of course I was joking.”

He turned a page. Another page. “But look at this!” He pointed to a picture of a young woman snapped walking along a beach, stomach hanging out, heavy thighs, flesh coloured an extra-lurid pink by the bad printing.

Liv shot upright, grabbed the paper, and panicked. “That’s not me, is it?”

It was Mariah Carey, looking relaxed, pretty, and plump. “Oh, it’s Mariah. Poor Mariah. Why doesn’t she just put on weight and have done with it? It’s obviously what her body wants. Up and down. Up and down. Being thin didn’t stop her record company dumping her, so what has she got to lose?”

“Her figure.”

“She’s not losing her figure, Royston. She’s just acquiring another one.”

Royston looked across fondly at his sweetheart, softening fast around the middle. “Following in her footsteps, are we?”

Liv giggled again and let her thoughts drift off in the sun. She considered reading another poem by Rod McKuen, but found it hard to summon the energy to lift the book and turn a page. She gazed at the pool, turquoise blue, and wondered when she last took a swim: weeks ago, it seemed. Then she turned her mind to the contents of her fridge, a favourite topic. Today she imagined the freezer compartment. She imagined she was two inches tall, clipboard in hand, undertaking an inventory, counting the giant pots of Ben & Jerry’s ice cream, giving the cartons an affectionate pat. Moving on as if in a dream, she saw herself lifting off one of the lids, staring down at the swirls of purple, orange and black, thickly speckled with nuts. It could have been a Jackson Pollock painting. She imagined a spoon digging in, excavating, and carrying the precious load to her mouth. She licked her lips.

“Liv,” Royston said suddenly, breaking into her reverie, “do you know what’s for lunch?”

“Ice cream,” Liv purred, “it has to be ice cream.”