Liza Todd: The Full Story of Elizabeth Taylor’s Daughter

Liza Todd is the only daughter of Elizabeth Taylor and producer Mike Todd, two of the biggest names of old Hollywood. She could have lived her whole life in that reflected fame. Instead, she became a respected sculptor of horses, built a quiet life on a farm in upstate New York, and guarded her privacy for decades.

Her story begins with joy and sudden loss. She was a baby when her father died, a child when Richard Burton became her adoptive father, and a young artist when she found the work that would define her life. Here is her full story, drawn from her own artist biography and major published profiles.

Quick Facts

A Famous Birth and a Sudden Loss

Liza Todd was born on August 6, 1957. Time magazine noted her arrival in its Milestones column, recording that she weighed 4 pounds 14 ounces. Her parents had married in Acapulco, Mexico, on February 2, 1957. Her mother was already one of the most famous film stars in the world, and her father was the flamboyant producer behind Around the World in 80 Days, which had won the Academy Award for Best Picture.

Mike Todd loved grand gestures. In June 1957 he threw a huge birthday party at Madison Square Garden that was broadcast on television. For a short season, the Todd family seemed to live at the bright centre of show business, with Liza as a baby at the heart of it.

Then, on March 22, 1958, Mike Todd died when his private plane crashed in New Mexico. Liza was only about seven months old. She would grow up knowing her father only through stories, photographs and the memories of others. Her mother, widowed at 26 with three young children, was left to rebuild her life in full public view.

Liza has two older half brothers from her mother’s earlier marriage to actor Michael Wilding: Michael Wilding Jr. and Christopher Wilding. In time, the family would grow and change again through her mother’s later marriages, but the loss of Mike Todd remained the first great fact of Liza’s life.

Richard Burton Becomes Her Father

After a marriage to singer Eddie Fisher, Elizabeth Taylor married Welsh actor Richard Burton in 1964. Burton adopted Liza, and by all published accounts he became the father figure she truly knew. Profiles of Liza often note that for much of her childhood she thought of Burton, not Todd, as her real father in daily life, simply because he was the man who raised her.

Burton and Taylor also adopted a daughter, Maria, who became Liza’s sister. The Burton Taylor years were famously intense: hit films, huge houses, jewels, travel and constant press attention. Liza spent parts of her childhood on her mother’s film sets and parts away at boarding school in Switzerland.

That mix, glamour on one side and school routine on the other, shaped her taste for a quieter life. People who have profiled her note that she saw the cost of fame very young. While her mother handled the cameras with famous grace, Liza decided early that she wanted her work, not her face, to be the thing people knew.

Her stepfather Burton died in 1984, the same year Liza married. Her mother went on to marry again, including Senator John Warner and later Larry Fortensky, but Burton remained, in family memory, the central father of her childhood.

Finding Her Own Art

Liza’s love of horses began in childhood, in England and Switzerland, according to her own artist biography. She turned that love into training. She studied at Hornsey College of Art in London and then continued her art studies in Los Angeles, at the institute named in profiles as the Otis Institute of Art and Design or the Art Institute in Los Angeles. Her own biography says she completed her studies in 1979.

From there she went straight into professional work as a sculptor, creating bronze editions of famous racehorses for The Newmarket Gallery in England. It was the perfect meeting of skill and subject: she understood horses as a rider and animal lover, not just as an artist looking at a shape.

Sculpture is slow, physical work. A bronze begins as a model, often in clay, and passes through moulds and casting before it becomes metal. It is about as far from the instant fame of film sets as a career can be, and for Liza that seems to have been the point. Her name on a work stood for her hands, not her mother.

Over the following years, private commissions built her name in the racing world. Owners of great horses wanted her to capture animals they loved, in a form that would outlast photographs.

The Racehorse Bronzes She Is Known For

Liza’s own biography lists her most notable private commissions: Northern Dancer, Seattle Slew, John Henry and Secretariat, four of the most celebrated racehorses of the modern era. She also made a half life size memorial of the great horse Nashua for Spendthrift Farm in Kentucky, where the horse spent his final years.

The racing historian John Fairley included only two modern sculptors in his book Great Racehorses in Art. One was John Skeaping, a master of the field. The other was Liza Todd. Her understanding of horse anatomy has been compared in print with that of George Stubbs, the great 18th century painter of horses. For a sculptor, that is serious praise from inside her own field, earned without any help from her family name.

Her work was not limited to racing. In 1999 the Swiss village of Gstaad, where she had spent time in her youth, commissioned a life size bronze calf for its town square. The calf, named Rosie, became a loved local landmark and, by her biography’s account, one of the village’s best known sights for visitors.

After the attacks of September 11, 2001, she created a life size rescue dog descending onto a base made with actual rubble from the World Trade Center. One cast from the edition is in a private collection in upstate New York. The second was donated and placed at Farmingdale State College on Long Island. It remains one of her most moving and most public works.

Since 2016, her biography says, her work has focused on helping African wildlife, in particular the orphaned elephants cared for by HERD in South Africa, described as the country’s first elephant orphanage. Her animal art, in other words, has grown into animal welfare work as well.

Marriage, Sons and a Farm in the Hudson Valley

In 1984 Liza married artist Hap Tivey. The couple had two sons: Quinn Tivey, born in 1986, and Rhys Tivey, born in 1991 according to People magazine. As a sculptor she has often worked under the name Liza Todd Tivey. Her marriage ended in divorce in 2003.

Her son Quinn has become the most public member of her branch of the family. He is a trustee of the Elizabeth Taylor AIDS Foundation and of the House of Taylor, which manages his grandmother’s estate and legacy. In a 2021 essay for People, Quinn wrote about carrying on the fight against HIV and AIDS that defined so much of his grandmother’s later life. Her other son, Rhys, is a musician and keeps a lower profile.

Liza herself settled in the Hudson Valley in upstate New York. Hello and People describe her life there on a farm of about 55 acres, a few hours north of Manhattan, surrounded by horses, goats, dogs and chickens. Local profiles say neighbours respect her privacy, and that she has sometimes played down her connection to her famous mother to keep her life simple.

Elizabeth Taylor died on March 23, 2011, of congestive heart failure. Liza, then in her fifties, grieved privately, as she has done everything. She did not turn her mother’s death into a media moment, and she has not written a tell all book in the years since.

FAQs

Who were Liza Todd’s parents?

Her mother was actress Elizabeth Taylor and her father was producer Mike Todd, who died in a plane crash in March 1958 when Liza was a baby. Actor Richard Burton later adopted her.

What is Liza Todd famous for in her own right?

She is a sculptor known for bronze racehorses, including Northern Dancer, Seattle Slew, John Henry and Secretariat, and for works such as the Gstaad calf Rosie and a 9/11 rescue dog memorial.

Does Liza Todd have children?

Yes. With her former husband, artist Hap Tivey, she has two sons, Quinn Tivey and Rhys Tivey. Quinn is a trustee of the Elizabeth Taylor AIDS Foundation.

Where does Liza Todd live now?

Published profiles place her on a farm in the Hudson Valley in upstate New York, where she lives a private life with her animals and continues her art and wildlife work.

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Final Thoughts

Liza Todd’s life answers a question many celebrity children face: what do you do with a famous name? Her answer was to build a name of her own, slowly, in bronze. She lost her father before she could remember him, grew up inside one of the most watched marriages in the world, and still managed to become, first and foremost, an artist.

Today her horses stand on farms and in collections, her rescue dog honours the heroes of 9/11, and her recent work supports orphaned elephants on another continent. It is a full creative life, lived quietly. For the daughter of Elizabeth Taylor and Mike Todd, that quiet may be her greatest achievement of all.

Featured photo: Elizabeth Taylor – photo by MGM publicity still, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons