Liv on love, Ben, losing the pointy ears RICHARD OUZOUNIAN thestar.com At first, I kept looking for the pointy ears. You can't really blame me. After being transfixed for the past three years by her performance as Arwen in The Lord Of The Rings trilogy, I half expected Liv Tyler to look the same in real life. She doesn't. She's even more beautiful. It's a cold, grey Saturday morning in Manhattan, too early for even an elf princess to be charming, but Tyler is sitting in a midtown hotel room, with her smile on high beams. She's here to talk about Jersey Girl, the romantic comedy by Kevin Smith that opens in Toronto next Friday. It's her first film to be released since the Tolkien epic and she's still struggling for closure with that earlier project. "It doesn't feel like it's over yet," she sighs, in that voice that manages to sound sweet and smoky simultaneously. "It was really a giant task to take on for that length of time, because it required constant reflection. None of us anticipated it was going to be that massive a success. Sure, we hoped for it, but when it happened, it was shocking and amazing." But she does admit it was a physically and emotionally stressful experience. "There'd be days down there in New Zealand when it would be boiling hot and my elf ears would start itching like crazy and I'd say, `In my next movie, I just want to sit down somewhere comfortable in ordinary clothes and just talk to somebody.'" And her wish came true in Jersey Girl. She plays Maya, a small-town New Jersey grad student who works in a video store. She spots single dad Ben Affleck renting an X-rated film and tries to interview him for her thesis on married men and their use of sexy videos. Romance, of course, ensues. Some of the film's most effective scenes are the moments when the two of them fulfill Tyler's fantasy of "just talking to somebody," thanks to the apparent ease between them. "I completely adore Ben," she enthuses of her former co-star from Armageddon. "Of all the actors I've ever acted with, for some reason, I feel a particular kind of comfort with him. We have some kind of special chemistry, which is kind of bizarre, because we don't really know each other that well." As for superstar behaviour, she found none of it. "He's generous, patient and kind as an actor, always thinking of the movie as a whole and the other people in the scene." Tyler kept to herself during the shooting and avoided the whole Bennifer media firestorm, but she has strong feelings about what celebrity does and doesn't mean. "Getting out of a car at a premiere and having gazillions of people scream your name is still kind of unbelievable to me. I've always been intrigued with what kind of a person somebody is, rather than what kind of a celebrity they are. I grew up around a lot of famous people so it wasn't a big deal." What's she's alluding to is one of the more fascinating upbringings in modern showbusiness. Her mother was rock'n'roll babe and Playboy centrefold Bebe Buell. She found herself pregnant by Aerosmith's Steve Tyler at a time when his drug use didn't exactly make him an ideal candidate for fatherhood. So Buell turned to old boyfriend Todd Rundgren, who agreed to raise the child as his own. Buell named her Liv, because actress Liv Ullmann was on the cover of TV Guide the week she was born: July 1, 1977. Young Liv grew up in Portland, Maine, which she drew on for her small-town character in Jersey Girl. "I knew what it was like to live in a place like that — secure and stifling at the same time." By the time she was 9, she met Tyler and confided to her diary: "I don't know why, but I feel like Steven is my daddy." She was 12 when she finally had her suspicions verified. At 14, her mother took her down to New York to begin her modeling career. The Aerosmith music video "Crazy" followed soon after and by the time she was 18, she was featured in Empire Records. That was 1995 and she has been in 18 films since. Tall (5-feet-10) and voluptuous, Tyler has always seemed (and played) older than her years, which caused a kind of blip in her development. "I went through all these years of being this together young person and everyone thought I was more mature than I really was. It wasn't until this past year I went through a kind of second adolescence and now I actually feel grown up for the first time." Part of that is due to her marriage in March of 2003 to Royston Langdon, former lead singer of Spacehog. Her cornflower-blue eyes acquire an extra shine as she talks about him. "He's cool with me and patient with everything I do and he's not bothered by the fame thing." As for a family, while conceding that "I've always wanted to have kids," she shakes her head and says, "I'm just not ready yet." Tyler deplores the way her profession insists that women choose between a career and a family. "There's a lot of pressure for women that we have this little window of opportunity while we're young, so we'd better take it. Well, why do we have to make three movies a year? Why not make one every two years and spend the rest of the time with the people we love?" She leans forward, head tilted to one side and I suddenly recall the scene in Jersey Girl where she gazes at Affleck and says "I'm kinda crushing on you right now." Looking at Liv Tyler, it's hard not to feel the same.