Provided are an aberration-compensating liquid crystal device, a method of manufacturing the same, an optical pickup including the liquid crystal device, and an optical recording and/or reproducing apparatus employing the optical pickup. The method of manufacturing an aberration-compensating liquid crystal device comprises: positioning a gray scale mask having an absorption rate distribution corresponding to that of aberrations to be corrected on a liquid crystal cell containing a mixture of liquid crystals and monomers injected between a pair of transparent substrates; and irradiating the liquid crystal cell on which the gray scale mask has been positioned with UV light so that the monomers undergo photopolymerization into polymer and phase separation into a polymer-existing region and a liquid crystal-existing region, thereby forming a liquid crystal layer having a phase difference distribution corresponding to that of aberrations to be corrected.