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On a two-lane country road a few hours north of Manhattan lives Liza Todd, a sculptor and animal lover, divorced mother of two and completely “ordinary citizen” who also happens to be the daughter of the late Elizabeth Taylor.
Todd rarely, if ever, mentions her famous lineage. She doesn’t have to. Her eyes give it away. “When I first met her, I noticed her eyes, and I knew who she was just from that,” says one Hudson Valley local who, like many who know Todd, did not want to be named for fear of upsetting their “very private” friend.
After growing up under Hollywood’s brightest spotlight — Todd was a young girl when frenzy sparked over Taylor’s love affair with Richard Burton — she reacted by retreating. She chose a quiet life near Hudson, NY, surrounded by her horses, goats, dogs and chickens.
“She made a decision early on never to be part of her mother’s world,” says one friend. “She has never sought any publicity.”
Todd is so protective of her identity that she has, at times, denied her lineage entirely.
“I don’t know where you got that information from,” she told one local when he asked, after she first moved to town, if the rumors churning through the local gossip mill were true. “She said it wasn’t her, but we knew it was,” he says.
Even now, some 20 years later, the one question everyone wants to ask is rarely uttered, except by those closest to her. “The one thing you think everyone would ask her about — What’s it like to have Elizabeth Taylor as your mother? — is never discussed,” says a friend.
When Taylor died on March 23, at age 79, of congestive heart failure, Todd was at her bedside, along with her siblings, Michael and Christopher Wilding, and Maria Burton. She came home to an avalanche of condolences.
“She said the response she got to her mother’s death was overwhelming,” said the local postmistress. Todd acknowledged many of the notes, sending out thank you cards made from an old photograph of Taylor, lying on the grass, looking up at her young daughter, says a person who received one.
When one local told Todd they saw her on TV during a tribute to her late mother, the modest Todd quipped, “I guess you didn’t blink.”
Todd lives on 55 acres of lush Hudson Valley woodland in a quaint brick farmhouse dubbed “Fecal Manor,” surrounded by her animals and her art. Though her residence is extremely modest, she is likely to inherit a vast fortune.
Taylor’s estate is estimated between $600 million and $1 billion. The trust she established is private, but one report indicates that each child will receive $100 million, a figure that may never become public unless a dispute drags the issue into court, says estate expert Julie Garber.
At 53, Todd has a peaceful life now, but her childhood was turbulent. She’s the daughter of Taylor and producer Mike Todd, who wed in February 1957, the third of Taylor’s eight marriages. Elizabeth “Liza” Todd was born that August. Her father died only months later in the crash of his private plane, the Lucky Liz. Soon after, Taylor married Eddie Fisher before quickly moving on to Burton, who adopted and helped raise Todd.
Despite the reputation of “The Battling Burtons,” the tempestuous actors would come home from the set and play word games with their children, Life reported. All four adored their mother and went on to lead relatively normal lives. Taylor referred to them as her “best friends” until the end of her life.
Still, Todd chose a life separate from her renowned parents. As a girl, she attended an exclusive boarding school in Gstaad and dabbled in acting with a small role as a beggar maid in Burton’s 1969 film “Anne of the Thousand Days.” She went on to study art at London’s Hornsey College and LA’s Otis Institute.
Now she crafts bronze sculptures of horses and dogs, including a series of thoroughbred champions. She also crafted a life-sized monument to a 9/11 rescue dog, portrayed clambering over actual debris from the World Trade Center, that is the centerpiece of a memorial garden at Farmingdale State College on Long Island.
She married the artist Hap Tivey in 1984 and had two sons, Quinn, 25, and Rhys, 19. Todd and Tivey divorced in 2003, but remain cordial and live just a few miles away from each other.
As a teenager, Quinn was a busboy and server at the Hudson Valley steak house The Quarry. He studied film at USC, but did not drop his grandparents’ names in his application, according to reports. He was an assistant to one of the producers of the 2010 film “The Company Men” starring Ben Affleck.
Rhys is an accomplished jazz musician who studied at NYU and plays weekly gigs at Gallagher’s Steak House in Times Square. He played a rendition of “Amazing Grace” on his trumpet at his grandmother’s funeral.
“They are good boys,” says one local. “They don’t put on any airs.”
Sources say Todd also never cashed in on her parents’ fame, nor let it stop her from pursuing her own dreams. “Liza doesn’t have a persecution complex about being Elizabeth Taylor’s daughter,” says Jeanne Chisholm, who runs the Chisholm Gallery in Millbrook, NY, and has represented Todd for a decade. “She loves her boys and her work and is just totally normal.”
Chisholm adds that Todd created jewelry in collaboration with her mother at one time. “She thought it was wonderful fun,” says Chisholm. “She thoroughly enjoyed doing projects with her mother.”
Although Taylor was never seen eating in the local diner or gabbing with townspeople at the coffee shop, there were signs when she arrived for a visit. “We only knew when she came to town,” says one man, “because of the limos.”