There is something quietly remarkable about a woman born at the very center of Hollywood’s golden storm who chose, without hesitation, to walk away from all of it. Liza Todd — the only daughter of screen legend Elizabeth Taylor and her third husband, theatrical producer Mike Todd — could have had every spotlight in the world handed to her on a silver platter. Instead, she packed her bags, picked up a chisel, and built a life that was entirely, beautifully her own.
This is her story.
Birth & Early Life: A Star-Studded Beginning
On August 6, 1957, a baby girl arrived in the world under the most dramatic of circumstances — which, given who her mother was, should surprise no one. Elizabeth Frances Todd was born via cesarean section, weighing just four pounds and 14 ounces, to the incomparable Elizabeth Taylor and her dashing, fast-living husband, Mike Todd.
Liza Todd was the only child born from the Taylor-Todd union, and she holds a particularly significant place in the family tree: she is the last biological child Elizabeth Taylor ever had. The birth was not an easy one. After an especially difficult premature labor, the delivery was complicated enough that, following the cesarean, Mike Todd made the decision to have the doctors sterilize his wife — a deeply personal and controversial choice made in the heat of a frightening moment.
Born into one of the most photographed households in America, little Liza entered a world of red carpets, film sets, and flashbulbs. Yet despite the glamour surrounding her arrival, her earliest years would be shaped not by Hollywood magic, but by heartbreak.
Tragedy Strikes: A Father She Never Knew
The cruelest irony of Liza Todd’s early life is that she never truly got to know the man whose name she carries. Her father, Mike Todd — a whirlwind of a man known for his producing of Around the World in 80 Days and his larger-than-life personality — died in a plane crash on March 22, 1958. Liza was just six months old.
The loss devastated Elizabeth Taylor. By all accounts, Mike Todd was the great love of her life, and his sudden, violent death left her emotionally shattered. The grief that followed was raw and public, playing out in newspaper headlines across the world while a baby girl at home would grow up with only photographs and stories to know her father by.
For Liza, the absence of Mike Todd was a quiet, constant undercurrent throughout her childhood. While she would go on to have stepfathers — some loving, some complicated — that original void never fully disappeared.
Growing Up with Famous Stepfathers
If Liza Todd childhood taught her anything, it was adaptability. Following Mike Todd’s death, Elizabeth Taylor’s personal life became one of the most scrutinized sagas in entertainment history. Along the way, Liza gained a rotating cast of stepfathers: pop singer Eddie Fisher, Welsh acting legend Richard Burton, U.S. Senator John Warner, and construction worker-turned-celebrity Larry Fortensky.
Of all of them, it was Richard Burton who left the deepest mark on Liza. Burton — fierce, poetic, and enormously talented — formally adopted her after he and Elizabeth Taylor married in 1964. This is why she is sometimes referred to as Liza Todd Burton in various records and credits. To those who knew the family well, Burton was her real father in every sense that mattered. The warmth between them was genuine, and his adoption of her was not a legal formality but an emotional truth.
During these years, Liza split her time between two very different worlds. She attended a prestigious private school in Gstaad, Switzerland, getting a structured, grounded education far from the chaos of the Hollywood circuit. Yet she was never fully removed from her mother’s world — she spent time on film sets, watching Elizabeth Taylor work, absorbing the atmosphere without being consumed by it.
It was a childhood unlike any other, full of privilege and instability in equal measure, set against backdrops that most people only see in movies.
Brushes with Acting — and Choosing Her Own Path
Given her parentage, the world fully expected Liza Todd to step onto a stage or in front of a camera. She had the genes for it. She had the connections. She even had a brief, early taste of it — appearing in an uncredited role in the 1969 film Anne of the Thousand Days, which starred her adoptive father Richard Burton.
But Liza was never interested in following that particular road. When a reporter asked her at just 12 years old whether she planned to become an actress like her famous mother, her response was as direct as it was memorable: “An actress? Urgh.”
That single syllable said everything. Liza Todd was going to do things her way.
She tried acting in school productions and found it did not fit. Rather than force a career built on her family name, she quietly pivoted toward art — a world where talent speaks louder than celebrity, and where the work itself is the point. It was a deliberate, considered choice, and one that defined the rest of her life.
Career as a Sculptor: Finding Her Own Voice
Today, Liza Todd is known not as a celebrity offspring but as an accomplished sculptor. She has made her home in upstate New York, where she lives and works away from the noise of the entertainment industry. Her specialty? Horses — a subject she brings to life with impressive skill and sensitivity.
Interestingly, Liza is not alone among Elizabeth Taylor’s children in choosing the arts. Like her eldest brother Michael Wilding Jr., she is a serious, working artist — proof that creative talent runs deep in this family, even when it expresses itself far outside the spotlight.
There is something fitting about Liza’s choice of subject. Horses are creatures of freedom, strength, and quiet dignity. In many ways, they mirror the life she has chosen: graceful, powerful, and resolutely private.
Her work is not about fame. It never was.
Personal Life & Family: Love, Divorce, and Two Sons
In 1984, Liza Todd married Hap Tivey, an artist in his own right, and the two built a life together that was as far removed from Hollywood as possible. They welcomed two sons: Quinn Tivey, born in 1986, and Rhys Tivey, born in 1990. The couple eventually divorced in 2003, but their two boys have grown up to be remarkable young men in their own right.
Rhys Tivey followed the family’s creative streak into music. He is a trumpeter, songwriter, and vocalist who holds a Bachelor of Music in Jazz Performance from NYU Steinhardt — a serious, formally trained musician who debuted his first album in 2020. He is also a yoga teacher and a vocal advocate for climate change awareness, and serves as an ambassador for the Elizabeth Taylor AIDS Foundation.
Quinn Tivey, meanwhile, has dedicated much of his energy to his grandmother’s most enduring legacy. He serves as an officer and ambassador for the Elizabeth Taylor AIDS Foundation, writing passionately about the ongoing fight against HIV/AIDS. In his own words: “The fight against HIV/AIDS was such a vital part of her legacy, and although the fight is far from over, I’m honoured to see ETAF continue her work.”
These are the Elizabeth Taylor grandchildren — not children of glitter and gossip, but young people who show up and do the work.
Relationship with Elizabeth Taylor: A Private Bond
The relationship between Liza Todd and her mother was close, warm, and — like everything else in Liza’s life — largely kept out of the public eye. Liza was fiercely protective of her own privacy and of the bond she shared with Elizabeth, preferring to support her mother quietly rather than make a spectacle of their connection.
That said, they did collaborate. Most notably, mother and daughter worked together on a jewelry line — a project that combined Elizabeth’s legendary eye for beauty with Liza’s artistic sensibility. It was a natural pairing, and by all accounts a joyful one.
Her long-time representative, Jeanne Chisholm, once put it plainly: “Liza doesn’t have a persecution complex about being Elizabeth Taylor’s daughter.” That is perhaps the most telling thing anyone has ever said about her. Where others might have chafed under the weight of such an enormous name, or sought to capitalize on it, Liza simply… got on with her life.
She is, above all, her own person.
Elizabeth Taylor Children: A Family Shaped by History
To understand Liza Todd Burton fully, it helps to understand the broader tapestry of Elizabeth Taylor children — each of whom carries a piece of that extraordinary legacy.
Elizabeth had four children across her many marriages. Michael Wilding Jr. and Christopher Wilding were born from her second marriage to British actor Michael Wilding. Liza Todd came from her union with Mike Todd. And Maria Burton was adopted during the Richard Burton years.
Among her siblings, Liza is the only biological daughter. Michael Wilding Jr. is also an artist and a father of three, including daughters Laela and Naomi, who famously bonded with their grandmother over her legendary designer wardrobe. Christopher Wilding has also lived a largely private life. Together, the four siblings form a quiet, dedicated family that has consistently honored their mother’s philanthropic spirit without seeking the limelight.
Life Today: Quiet, Creative, and Intentional
If you go looking for Elizabeth Taylor daughter Liza Todd today on social media, you will not find her — because she simply is not there. No Instagram, no Twitter, no TikTok. In an age when celebrity adjacency is currency, Liza has chosen something far more radical: genuine privacy.
She lives in a secluded countryside setting a few hours from Manhattan, surrounded by her art and her animals, and far from the clamor of gossip columns and entertainment news. Her estimated net worth sits somewhere between $1 million and $5 million — comfortable, but not the gilded fortune one might associate with the Taylor name.
It is a life built with intention. Every choice — the school in Switzerland, the sculptor’s studio, the upstate farmhouse — points to a woman who knew exactly who she was and what she wanted, even when the world had different expectations.
Elizabeth Taylor’s Legacy & Liza’s Role in It
When Elizabeth Taylor passed away on March 23, 2011, at the age of 79 from congestive heart failure, the world lost one of its last true legends. The grief was global. For Liza and her siblings, it was simply the loss of their mother — irreplaceable, larger than life, and deeply loved.
But Elizabeth’s legacy did not end with her passing. It lives on through the Elizabeth Taylor AIDS Foundation, which continues to fight stigma, fund research, and support communities affected by HIV/AIDS. Both of Liza’s sons, Quinn and Rhys, are active ambassadors for the foundation — making the Elizabeth Taylor grandchildren the living continuation of a cause their grandmother championed at a time when few others dared to.
Liza’s own role in this legacy is quieter, but no less real. She is the keeper of memories, the artist who inherited her mother’s eye for beauty, the woman who proved that being Elizabeth Taylor’s daughter did not have to define your entire existence — but could quietly, proudly, inform it.
Conclusion: A Life Lived on Her Own Terms
There is a certain kind of courage in choosing ordinariness when the extraordinary is right there for the taking. Liza Todd had every opportunity to be famous, to trade on a name that opened every door in Hollywood, and to live the kind of life that filled magazine covers.
She chose horse sculptures and upstate New York instead.
In doing so, she redefined what it means to be Elizabeth Taylor’s daughter — not as an extension of a legend, but as a full, complex, quietly remarkable person in her own right. An artist. A mother. A private woman in a very public world.
And perhaps that, more than anything, is the most Taylor-esque thing about her: she always knew exactly what she wanted, and she never apologized for it.
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