Liev Schreiber
Schreiber at the 7th Annual Chanel Tribeca Film Festival Artists Dinner 2012.
Born	Isaac Liev Schreiber (1967-10-04) October 4, 1967 (age 44) San Francisco, California, U.S.
Occupation	Actor, producer, director, screenwriter
Years active	1991–present
Partner	Naomi Watts (2005–present; 2 children)

Isaac Liev Schreiber ( /ˈliːɨv/ not /ˈliːv/; born October 4, 1967), commonly known as Liev Schreiber, is an American actor, producer, director, and screenwriter. He became known during the late 1990s and early 2000s, having initially appeared in several independent films, and later mainstream Hollywood films, including the Scream trilogy of horror films, Phantoms, The Sum of All Fears, X-Men Origins: Wolverine, Salt and Goon. Schreiber is also a respected stage actor, having performed in several Broadway productions. In 2005, Schreiber won a Tony Award as Best Featured Actor for his performance in the play Glengarry Glen Ross. That year, Schreiber also made his debut as a film director and writer with Everything Is Illuminated, based on the novel of the same name.

Schreiber is in a relationship with Naomi Watts, with whom he has two children.

Early life[link]

Schreiber was born Isaac Liev Schreiber in San Francisco, California, the son of Heather (née Milgram) and Tell Schreiber, a stage actor and director. His mother already had three sons when he was born.^[1] Schreiber's father, who is of Austrian, Swiss, Irish, and Scottish descent, was from a wealthy "WASP" society family from Bucks County, Pennsylvania; he graduated from Hampshire College and was a wrestling and football star.^[2][3][4] Schreiber's mother, who now lives on an ashram in Virginia, was born into a Brooklyn working-class household of Jewish Communists, descended from immigrants from Poland, Ukraine, and Germany. With a firm knowledge of classical music and Russian literature, she has been described by Schreiber as a "far-out Socialist Labor Party hippie bohemian freak who hung out with William Burroughs."^[2][3][5] When Heather was twelve, her own mother, Liev's grandmother, was lobotomized.^[2] His mother has said that she named him after her favorite Russian author, Leo Tolstoy, while his father has stated that Schreiber was named after the doctor who saved his mother's life. His family nickname, adopted when Schreiber was a baby, is "Huggy."^[2]

When Schreiber was one year old, his family moved to Canada.^[3] According to Tell, at the beginning of their marriage, in San Francisco, Heather had a bad experience on LSD. Over the next four years, she was repeatedly admitted to hospitals and underwent therapy.^[2] After Tell threatened to admit her to a mental institution, she left. As Tell pursued his wife, Liev and his mother were trailed by private detectives in various states; when he was three, his father kidnapped him from an upstate New York commune where Heather had decamped. By the time Liev was four, he was living with her on the fourth floor of a dilapidated walkup at First Avenue and First Street in New York City (his half brothers from her first marriage were with their father in a duplex on Central Park West), and he was the object of a fierce custody battle, which bankrupted his beloved maternal grandfather, Alex Milgram. (Milgram was the significant male in Schreiber’s youth. He played the cello and owned Renoir etchings, and made his living by delivering meat to restaurants.)^[2] When Schreiber was five, his parents divorced; his mother won custody, and the two moved to a cold-water flat on the Lower East Side in Manhattan, New York City, where he was raised.^[3][6] They frequently had no electricity, hot water, or even beds.^[6]

His mother was "a highly cultured eccentric" who supported them by splitting her time between driving a cab and creating papier-mâché puppets."^[2] On Schreiber's 16th birthday, his mother bought him a motorcycle, "to promote fearlessness."^[2] The critic John Lahr wrote in a 1999 New Yorker profile that, "To a large extent, Schreiber's professional shape-shifting and his uncanny instinct for isolating the frightened, frail, goofy parts of his characters are a result of being forced to adapt to his mother's eccentricities. It's both his grief and his gift."^[2] He endured her mood swings and bohemian proclivities (she made him take Hindu names, wear yoga shirts, and he was forced, briefly, to go to an Ashram school in Connecticut when he was 12).^[7] Schreiber's mother also forbade Schreiber from seeing color movies. As a result, his favorite actor was Charlie Chaplin. In the late 70s and early 80s Schreiber, known then as Shiva Das, lived at the Satchidananda Ashram, Yogaville East, in Pomfret, Connecticut. He also abided by his mother's vegetarian diet. In retrospect, Schreiber said in a 2008 interview, he appreciates his mother's influences, saying, "Since I've had Sasha, I've completely identified with everything my mother went through raising me...And I think her choices were inspired."^[1]

Education[link]

Subsequently, Schreiber attended Friends Seminary at the same time as future actress Amanda Peet.^[8]

Schreiber went on to Hampshire College in Amherst, Massachusetts where he began his acting training at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, via the Five Colleges consortium. In March of 1989 Liev played Antonio in the Merchant of Venice alongside another successful professional actor, Jeffrey Donovan. Liev graduated with a master's degree from the Yale School of Drama in 1992,^[9] where he starred in Charles Evered's The Size of the World, directed by Walton Jones. At Yale, Liev studied with Earle R. Gister.^[10] He also attended the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art in London. He originally wanted to be a screenwriter, but was steered toward acting instead.

Career[link]

Early films[link]

Schreiber had several supporting roles in various independent films until his big break, as the accused murderer Cotton Weary in the Scream trilogy of horror films. Though the success of the Scream trilogy would lead Schreiber to roles in several big-budget studio pictures, Entertainment Weekly wrote in 2007 that "Schreiber is [still] best known for such indie gems as Walking and Talking, The Daytrippers, and Big Night.^[11]

After Scream, Schreiber was cast as the young Orson Welles in the HBO original movie RKO 281, for which he was nominated for Emmy and Golden Globe Awards. He then played supporting roles in several studio films, including the 2000 movie of Hamlet with Ethan Hawke, The Hurricane with Denzel Washington, and The Sum of All Fears with Ben Affleck. The 2004 remake of The Manchurian Candidate, with Washington and Meryl Streep, was another major film for the actor, stirring some controversy as it opened during a heated presidential election cycle. Schreiber also played Robert Thorn with Julia Stiles in the 2006 film The Omen, a remake of the 1976 horror classic The Omen (1976). Schreiber's character is an American ambassador who learns to his horror that his son is actually the literal Antichrist. He played the time-traveling ex-boyfriend of Meg Ryan in Kate and Leopold, with Hugh Jackman's century-old character, Leopold, having followed Liev into current times, playing the ultimate love interest of Meg Ryan's Kate.

Shakespeare[link]

Along with his screen work, Schreiber is a well-respected classical actor; in a 1998 review of the Shakespeare play Cymbeline, The New York Times called his performance "revelatory" and ended the article with the plea, "More Shakespeare, Mr. Schreiber."^[12] A year later, Schreiber played the title role in Hamlet in a December 1999 revival at The Public Theater, to similar raves. In 2000, he played Laertes in Hamlet, a modern adaptation of the play. His performance in the title role of Henry V in a 2003 Central Park production of that play caused Lahr to expound upon his aptitude at playing Shakespeare. "He has a swiftness of mind," Lahr wrote, "which convinces the audience that language is being coined in the moment. His speech, unlike that of the merely adequate supporting cast, feels lived rather than learned."^[13]

In June to July 2006, he played the title role in Macbeth opposite Jennifer Ehle at the Delacorte Theater.

Narration and voiceover work[link]

Schreiber has narrated a number of documentaries, along with Michael G. Stanton, many of them aired as part of PBS series such as American Experience, Nova, and Secrets of the Dead. He is also the voice behind the television commercials for Infiniti.

In 1994, he narrated Two Billion Hearts, the official film of 1994 World Cup.

Schreiber is also the voice of HBO's Sports of the 20th Century documentaries. Similarly, Schreiber is also the narrator of HBO Boxing's Countdown and 24/7 documentary series. Schreiber served as the voice of Skeletor in the 2002 incarnation of Masters of the Universe. Schreiber narrated Hard Knocks: Training Camp with the Cincinnati Bengals in 2009, and Magic & Bird: A Courtship of Rivals and Broad Street Bullies in 2010, on HBO. Schreiber provided the narration for "Making of Pumping Iron" documentary that is included in a special anniversary edition of the movie Pumping Iron. He also narrated the History Channel specials Ape to Man and America: The Story of Us.

Schreiber reprised his role as narrator for HBO's 24/7: Road to the Winter Classic NHL documentary, which followed the Pittsburgh Penguins and Washington Capitals as they prepared to face each other in the 2011 NHL Winter Classic at Heinz Field, in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania on January 1, 2011. Once again, Schreiber is the narrator for the HBO Series, "24/7 : Road to the Winter Classic". This year, the Philadelphia Flyers and the New York Rangers will battle in the Classic, at Citizen's Bank Park in the 2012 NHL Winter Classic.

Schreiber also narrated the 2011 documentary Hitler's G.I. Death Camp on the National Geographic Channel. The newly released 2012 "Kinderblock 66" is narrated by Schreiber.