Background

Ethnicity: Liev Schreiber’s mother is Jewish (of Polish Jewish and Russian Jewish descent). Liev’s father’s ancestry includes German (the origin of his surname), Swiss-German, Danish, Dutch, English, French, Norwegian, Belgian (Flemish), Scottish, and Welsh.

Liev Schreiber was born on October 4, 1967, in San Francisco, California, the United States. His mother Heather Milgram is Jewish and has good knowledge of classical music and Russian literature. His father, Tell Carroll Schreiber, comes from a wealthy Protestant family. He is a stage actor and director. Liev has half-brothers from his mother’s first marriage. Actor Pablo Schreiber is his half-brother from his father’s side.

At the beginning of his parents’ marriage in San Francisco, his mother was heavily dependent on LSD, and was repeatedly hospitalized and also underwent therapy. When he was a toddler, his family moved to Canada.

When his father threatened to admit his mother to a mental hospital for her LSD problems, she left him and took Liev with her. However, with the help of private detectives, his father could track them down. When Liev was three, his father even kidnapped him from a place in New York, where Heather stayed. When Liev was four, he was still with his mother, living in a dilapidated building in New York City. Later, his parents got entangled in a custody battle over him, and his maternal grandfather, Alex Milgram, became bankrupt fighting the custody battle.

His parents divorced when Liev was five, and his mother won his custody. They moved into a cheap apartment in Manhattan, and he was enrolled in Joffrey Ballet School of New York. He was raised in poverty, sleeping on the floor with no electricity and no hot water in the apartment.

Things were hard for them, and they spent time living in squats in abandoned buildings, and an apartment without electricity, while Heather looked for work to support them. During this time, his mother taught him to read and forbid him from seeing movies in color, which left Liev to see old black and white and silent films at a local revival house. He particularly enjoyed those by Charlie Chaplin. The first color movie he saw was Star Wars in 1977.

His mother earned a living by driving a cab and making papier-mâché puppets. At times, he had to endure his mother's eccentricities and bohemian bent of mind. She even forced him to go to an ashram school when he was 12 and made him wear yoga shirts. In the late 1970s, Liev, who was then called Shiva Das, lived at the Satchidananda Ashram in Connecticut and was on a vegetarian diet. In retrospect, Schreiber said in a 2008 interview that 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."

Education

Schreiber attended Joffrey Ballet School of New York. Later he went to Brooklyn Tech High School, he played the bass clarinet. He also attended Friends Seminary in Manhattan.

It was at the Quakers’ Friends Seminary that Schreiber first dabbled in acting, appearing in school plays. He began acting seriously at Hampshire College and continued at the Yale University School of Drama in 1992. While in the school, he performed in The Size of the World, directed by Walton Jones. He originally wanted to be a playwright, but his teacher encouraged him to become an actor. He furthered his studies by attending the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art.

Career

Liev Schreiber worked with the Public Theater's New York Shakespeare Festival during the initial phase of his career. Schreiber's first professional work was on Broadway, in a 1993 production of “In the Summer House” with Dianne Wiest. More theater work followed, and in 1994 the actor made his film debut in the Steve Martin comedy Mixed Nuts. The film was a flop, although Schreiber's role as a rather muscular transvestite proved to be one of the picture's few memorable features.

His next project, the 1995 indie Denise Calls Up, fared a little better; despite almost non-existent box office, it was rewarded with critical approval. Following more minor film work, Schreiber landed the role of a British bouncer in the successful indie flick Party Girl (1995), which also starred indie queen Parker Posey. Schreiber got an introduction to a more mainstream audience thanks to his role as killer Cotton Weary in Wes Craven's mega-hit Scream, a role he reprised in the film's sequel, Scream 2 (1997). The same year, Schreiber had leading roles in two more independent films, The Daytrippers (which again paired him with Posey) and Walking and Talking, as well as a secondary role in the Mel Gibson thriller Ransom.

Deftly straddling the divide between Sundance and the Studio, Schreiber went on make three major mainstream pictures in 1998: Phantoms with Rose McGowan and Ben Affleck; Twilight with Susan Sarandon, Paul Newman, and Gene Hackman; and Sphere with Samuel L. Jackson, Sharon Stone and Dustin Hoffman. The following year, Schreiber returned to more familiar territory with his role in Tony Goldwyn's small but successful drama A Walk on the Moon. As the man Diane Lane cuckolds for Viggo Mortensen, Schreiber mined endless possibilities from what could have been a narrow role, giving his character the sort of charming, good-intentioned inadequacy that has become one of the actor's trademarks. In 1999, Schreiber appeared in Jakob the Liar opposite Robin Williams, as well as Norman Jewison's The Hurricane. He played a supporting role in Kate & Leopold (2001) opposite Meg Ryan and Hugh Jackman and was in The Sum of All Fears (2002) starring Morgan Freeman and Ben Affleck. In The Manchurian Candidate (2004), he played a supporting role opposite Denzel Washington. He graduated to a lead role in The Omen (2006), playing a father who realizes his son is the devil incarnate. In 2012, he began work on the crime drama series Ray Donovan, for which he has earned two Emmy nods and four Golden Globe nominations, the latest in 2017. He then starred in Lee Daniels' The Butler (2013) alongside Forest Whitaker and Oprah Winfrey.

His other projects include Pawn Sacrifice (2015), the 2016 Best Picture Oscar winner Spotlight (2015), the sci-fi action film The 5th Wave (2016) with Chloë Grace Moretz, the boxing movie The Bleeder (2016) with Naomi Watts and Ron Perlman, and the sport comedy Goon: Last of the Enforcers (2017) with Elisha Cuthbert and T.J. Miller. He also lent his voice to My Little Pony: The Movie (2017).

In 2018, he was part of the ensemble cast of the animated film Isle of Dogs, by Wes Anderson, which premiered at the 68th Berlin International Film Festival; and voiced the supervillain Kingpin in the animated Spider-Man movie Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse. He also appeared in the romantic comedy film A Rainy Day in New York, written and directed by Woody Allen. It also stars Timothée Chalamet, Selena Gomez, Elle Fanning, Jude Law, and Diego Luna.

Achievements

• 

  Liev Schreiber’s performance in the historical drama film RKO 281 received rave reviews and earned him Emmy and Golden Globe award nominations. His performance as Richard Roma in the 2005 play Glengarry Glen Ross, earned him a Tony Award for Best Performance by a Featured Actor in a Play.
  
  That year, he made his debut as a film director and writer with Everything Is Illuminated (2005), based on the novel of the same name. Schreiber has had further success in the television world, notably portraying the eponymous protagonist of the Showtime drama series Ray Donovan (2013-present); the role has earned him five Golden Globe Award nominations and three Primetime Emmy Award nominations.

Works

More photos

• movie

  • X-Men Origins: Wolverine

    (Heroic Hugh Jackman breathes the fire into Wolverine - wi...)

    2009
  • Phantoms

    (Five lone survivors in a devastated town must face the un...)

    1998
  • Scream

    (After a series of mysterious deaths befalls their small t...)

    1996
  • Movie 43

    (From the twisted minds of producers Peter Farrelly (Hall ...)

    2013
  • Chuck

    (Chuck is the true-life story of Chuck Wepner, a liquor sa...)

    2016
  • Defiance

    (Jewish brothers in Nazi-occupied Eastern Europe escape in...)

    2008
  • The Daytrippers

    (When a content housewife discovers a love letter addresse...)

    1996
  • Twilight

    (In this urban detective thriller, Private eye Harry Ross ...)

    1998
  • The Manchurian Candidate

    (As the entire nation watches the presidential campaign hu...)

    2004
  • A Perfect Man

    (Liev Schreiber (X-Men Origins: Wolverine, Ray Donovan) st...)

    2013
  • Fading Gigolo

    (Murray (Woody Allen) talks his friend Fioravante (John Tu...)

    2013
  • Spinning Boris

    (This is the improbable but true story of three Americans ...)

    2003
  • Jakob The Liar

    (Robin Williams plays a Jewish man in Nazi-occupied Poland...)

    1999
  • My Little Pony

    (When a dark force threatens Ponyville and the Mane 6, the...)

    2017
  • Repo Men

    (Jude Law and Forest Whitaker star in this ultra-cool acti...)

    2010
  • The Butler

    (Forest Whitaker leads an all-star cast as a White House b...)

    2013
  • The Painted Veil

    (A love story set in the 1920s of a young English couple, ...)

    2006
  • Scream 3

    (While Sidney Prescott lives in safely guarded seclusion, ...)

    2000
  • Love In The Time Of Cholera

    (Based on Nobel Prize-winning author Gabriel García Márque...)

    2007
  • The Last Days on Mars

    (On the eve that the crew of the very first manned expedit...)

    2013
  • Taking Woodstock

    (From the Oscar-winning director of Brokeback Mountain com...)

    2009
  • Spotlight

    (This critically acclaimed film chronicles the true story ...)

    2015
  • Spider-Man: Into The Spider-Verse

    ("Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse" introduces Brooklyn t...)

    2018
  • Pawn Sacrifice

    (In a gripping true story, American chess prodigy Bobby Fi...)

    2014
  • Money For Nothing: Inside the Federal Reserve

    (Money For Nothing: Inside The Federal Reserve is an indep...)

    2013
  • The Hurricane

    (Wrongfully imprisoned for murder, boxer Rubin "Hurricane"...)

    1999
  • Hamlet

    (Ethan Hawke is joined by Julia Stiles and Bill Murray in ...)

    2000
  • A Walk On The Moon

    (Dustin Hoffman presents Diane Lane (Murder At 1600, Jack)...)

    1999
  • Desert Blue

    (When cable TV starlet Skye gets stuck in a tiny Californi...)

    1998
  • Mental

    (A new comedy from the director and star of Muriel's Weddi...)

    2012
  • Isle of Dogs

    (Wes Anderson directed this hilarious stop-motion animated...)

    2018
  • Goon

    (When Doug gets into a fistfight with a hockey thug an onl...)

    2010
  • Spring Forward

    (In this profound drama, a young ex-con and a retiring mun...)

    2000
  • The 5th Wave

    (A group of teen survivors fight to save the human race fr...)

    2016
  • The Reluctant Fundamentalist

    (A successful young Wall Street exec is drawn into a confl...)

    2012
  • Scream 2

    (Away at college, Sidney Prescott thought she'd finally pu...)

    1997
  • Creed

    (Adonis Johnson never knew his famous father, world heavyw...)

    2015
  • The Sum of All Fears

    (CIA analyst Jack Ryan hunts down a group of terrorists wh...)

    2002
  • Walking and Talking

    (Laura, Frank, Andrew, and Amelia always have something to...)

    1996
  • Party Girl

    (In this raucous comedy, Parker Posey stars as a hard-part...)

    1995
  • Big Night

    (A failing Italian restaurant run by two brothers gambles ...)

    1996
  • Mad Love

    (A love story of young college-bound teens on the verge of...)

    1995
  • Salt

    (Centers on a CIA officer who is fingered as a Russian sle...)

    2010
  • Mixed Nuts

    (Steve Martin plays the bumbling head of a suicide hotline...)

    1994
  • The Ten

    (Ten stories, each inspired by one of the ten commandments.)

    2007
  • Ransom

    (A father withholds ransom from his son's kidnappers.)

    1996
  • Sphere

    (Dustin Hoffman, Sharon Stone, and Samuel L. Jackson star ...)

    1998
  • Kate & Leopold

    (Kate's ex-boyfriend finds a gap in time.)

    2001
  • Unity

    (A study in the duality of man. Even after thousands and t...)

    2015
  • The Omen

    (When the U.S. ambassador to England begins to suspect tha...)

    2006

• TV series

  • Ray Donovan

    (Set in the sprawling mecca of the rich and famous, Ray Do...)

    2013

Religion

Liev Schreiber grew up in New York City with a single mother who hauled him from ashram to ashram throughout his childhood. He still meditates and tries to practice for 20 minutes every day.

Politics

Schreiber endorsed Senator Bernie Sanders for President in the 2016 United States presidential election.

Views

Quotations: "You can think about your career or you can think about your job. I like to think about my job."

"It's good to overexpose yourself with work. But don't expose yourself too much with the press."

"I am so used to being able to express myself from being an actor. So when people don't understand me, I'm just completely lost."

"Everyone assumes that novelists are smarter and more interesting. They're generally smarter and more interesting, but they're often very short. So it kind of cancels all the smart and interesting stuff out."

Personality

Liev Schreiber's childhood nickname was Huggy - and his mother, Heather, still calls him that. She told Esquire in June 2016 that she gave him that sobriquet, "Because as an infant he would reach out to grab you. He was very introverted as a kid. Precocious. A very attractive child. And athletic. Independent and fearless."

When Liev Schreiber landed the role of Sabretooth in X-Men Origins: Wolverine, he had to whip into shape fast. Co-star Hugh Jackman helped him embrace a healthy diet, trainers and a workout regimen. "I never used to believe in working on your body. Acting that smacked of vanity to me was bad for your acting, but I learned that wasn't true," Liev told Men's Journal in July 2015. "There's a whole set of tools available to you, and you're not using them because you're insecure or lazy, and I was both."

According to a June 2015 Vanity Fair questionnaire, Liev Schreiber's go-to alcoholic beverage is a gin martini: up, dry and with olives.

If Liev Schreiber seems austere around a lot of people, it might be because he's feeling a bit anxious. "I get panic attacks in big crowds," he told W Magazine in 2008. The actor has also admitted to having obsessive-compulsive personality traits.

Interests

• Politicians

  Bernie Sanders

• Sport & Clubs

  boxing, hockey

• Athletes

  Muhammad Ali

Connections

The status of Liev Schreiber’s relationship with British-Australian actress Naomi Watts, with whom he starred in The Painted Veil, was a mystery for a long time. While in 2010, Naomi mentioned in an interview that Liev had given her a ring, in June 2013, Liev referred to her as his “wife.”

The couple's first son, Alexander Pete, was born in 2007. They call him Sasha, a Russian nickname variation of the name Alexander. Their second son, Samuel Kai, was born in 2008. In April 2010, Watts said that the pair would have a third child if they could be guaranteed a baby girl or twin baby girls. After 11 years of togetherness, the couple separated in 2016.

Father:

Tell Carroll Schreiber

The relationship between Liev and his father was never a smooth one. It was a love-hate relationship that started since Tell kidnapped his son from his mother when Liev was three. Heather eventually won custody of her son but it took years for the famed actor to forgive his father who is also an actor.

Mother:

Heather Milgram

Liev was raised by his mother who worked as a painter and part-time cab driver all to support her son. Heather was born in a Jewish family that had Poland and Russian roots. She taught her son to read and remains a major pillar of support to the movie star.

ex-girlfriend:

Naomi Watts

Liev Schreiber and Naomi Watts called it quits in September 2016 after 11 years and two kids together. "There are good days and bad days and Liev and I are on great terms and we're trying to do our absolute best for the sake of the children and we hope to keep moving forward in that way," Naomi told Vogue Australia in May 2017.

Half-brother:

Pablo Schreiber

Pablo did not meet his brother Liev until he was 16 in a production. Both sons were influenced by their father in different ways but ultimately chose acting as a profession.

Half-brother:

Will Schreiber

Half-brother:

Max Connolly

Son:

Alexander Pete Schreiber

Son:

Samuel Kai Schreiber

colleague:

Sharon Stone

colleague:

Edward Norton

colleague:

Winona Ryder

colleague:

Jon Hamm

colleague:

Elizabeth Banks

colleague:

Kate Bosworth

colleague:

Sofía Vergara

colleague:

Peter Sarsgaard

colleague:

Mark Ruffalo

colleague:

Chloë Moretz

colleague:

Sylvester Stallone

colleague:

Selena Gomez

colleague:

Elle Fanning

References

• Liev Schreiber on Instagram
• Liev Schreiber on Twitter