Isaac Liev Schreiber was born on October 4, 1967, in San Francisco, California,[1] the son of Heather Milgram,[2] a painter, and Tell Schreiber, an actor and carpenter.[3][4] His father was Protestant and his mother is Jewish.[5][6][7] His maternal grandfather, Alex Milgram, emigrated from Ukraine. Milgram, who was the most significant male in Schreiber's youth, played the cello and owned Pierre-Auguste Renoir etchings, and made his living by delivering meat to restaurants.[8][9][10][11] His mother, who is an aficionada of classical music and Russian literature, has said that she named Liev 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".[12][8]
When Schreiber was one year old, his family moved to the unincorporated rural community of Winlaw, in the southern interior of British Columbia.[13] Over the next four years, his mother was hospitalized on several occasions and underwent therapy related to a bad experience on LSD that she had near the beginning of her marriage (in San Francisco), according to Schreiber's father.[8] After Schreiber's father threatened to have Schreiber's mother admitted to a mental institution, Schreiber was kidnapped by his mother, eventually leading to his mother gaining full custody of him.[14] They squatted on the Lower East Side in New York City.[15]
Schreiber has described his mother as a "far-out Socialist Labor Partyhippiebohemianfreak who hung out with William Burroughs".[8][16][17] She was "a highly cultured eccentric" who earned a living by splitting her time between driving a cab and creating papier-mâché puppets." In 1983, his mother bought him a motorcycle on his 16th birthday to "promote fearlessness."[8] 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."[8]
Her bohemian proclivities led to actions such as making Schreiber take the Hindu name Shiva Das, wear yoga shirts, consume a vegetarian diet, and briefly attend SatchidanandaAshram in Pomfret, Connecticut, when he was 12.[18] Schreiber's mother also forbade her son from seeing color films. As a result, his favorite actors were Charlie Chaplin, Andrew Cartwright, and Basil Rathbone. 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."[19]
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."[34] 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 went on to play Laertes in the film Hamlet, a modern adaptation of the play.[35] His performance in the title role of Henry V in a 2003 Central Park production of that play caused The New Yorker magazine critic John Lahr to expound upon his aptitude for playing Shakespeare characters. "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."[36]
Schreiber told The New Yorker in 1999, "I don't know that I want to be an actor for the rest of my life." For a time in the late 1990s, he hoped to produce and direct an adaptation of The Merchant of Venice starring Dustin Hoffman.[8] During that time, Schreiber started writing a screenplay about his relationship with his Ukrainian grandfather, a project he abandoned when, according to The New York Times, "he read Jonathan Safran Foer's hit novel, Everything Is Illuminated, and decided Mr. Foer had done it better."[37] Schreiber's film adaptation of the short story from which the novel originated, which he both wrote and directed, was released in 2005. The film, which starred Elijah Wood, received lukewarm-to-positive reviews,[38] with Roger Ebert calling it "a film that grows in reflection."[citation needed] In 2002, he starred in Neil LaBute's play The Mercy Seat along with Sigourney Weaveroff-Broadway that was critically and commercially very successful.
From June to July 2006, he played the title role in Macbeth opposite Jennifer Ehle at the Delacorte Theater. Variety critic David Rooney praised his performance, writing: "The complexities behind Macbeth’s surrender to evil and to overpowering destiny are compellingly embodied in Schreiber’s contained performance".[44] He appeared in the Broadway revival of Eric Bogosian's Talk Radio, portraying shock jock Barry Champlain. The show began previews at the Longacre Theatre on February 15, 2007, in preparation for its March opening. On May 11, 2007, he won the Drama League Award for distinguished performance in Talk Radio, and has received Tony, Drama Desk, and Outer Critics Circle Award nominations for the role. The New York Times' Ben Brantley called his performance "the most lacerating portrait of a human meltdown this side of a Francis Bacon painting."[19] Schreiber played the womanizing Lotario Thurgot in Mike Newell's 2007 screen adaptation of Love in the Time of Cholera,. In a January 2007 interview, Schreiber mentioned that he was working on a screenplay.[25] Late in 2008, Schreiber portrayed Jewishresistance fighter Zus Bielski in the film Defiance, alongside Daniel Craig. In 2009, Schreiber played the mutant supervillain Victor Creed in the Marvel Comics film X-Men Origins: Wolverine.[45]
In 2016 he starred as the professional boxer Chuck Wepner in the film Chuck which he also wrote and produced. The film premiered at the 73rd Venice International Film Festival to positive reviews. Schreiber returned to Broadway playing the Machiavellian seducer Vicomte de Valmont acting alongside Janet McTeer in the 2016 revival Les Liaisons Dangereuses.[67] The play ran from October 2016 to January 2017. Marilyn Stasio of Variety gave the production a mixed review, and wrote of his performance, "[He] is a strong actor and a studly kind of male, and despite a constricting costume and skull-pinching wig, he exudes a modern manliness that hardly suits the effete Valmont."[68] That same year Schreiber returned to play Ross "The Boss" Rhea in the sports comedy Goon: Last of the Enforcers, a sequel to the 2011 film Goon of which he also acted in. In 2016 he played Victor Lustig in the Comedy Central sketch series Drunk History. During the story development for Logan, Liev had been approached about the potential of Victor Creed to return to the X-Men film universe. Following the film's release, Hugh Jackman revealed that early versions of the script included the character but that element was eventually removed from the final screenplay.[69] In 2017, Liev was cast to voice the Storm King, the main antagonist in the 2017 film My Little Pony: The Movie, based on the show My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic. On his acceptance of the part, Live said that, because of his children's exposure to his adult-oriented film work, he wanted something more child-friendly for them to watch.[70]
In 2020, Showtime ended Ray Donovan after its seventh season. As a conclusion to the series, a Ray Donovan film was released in January 2022. Schreiber co-wrote the script along with the director David Hollander.[73] In a second collaboration with filmmaker Wes Anderson, he appeared in The French Dispatch in the role of an unnamed talk show host. The film was originally set to be released in 2020, but it was delayed numerous times due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The film ultimately premiered at the Cannes Film Festival on July 12 and was released theatrically in the U.S. on October 22, 2021. Schreiber worked on a film adaptation ofAcross the River and Into the Trees. In the film, he played the leading role of Colonel Richard Cantwell, originally set to be played by Pierce Brosnan.
Schreiber was in a relationship with British actress Naomi Watts (with whom he appeared in The Painted Veil).[76] They have two children.[77][78][79] On September 26, 2016, Schreiber and Watts separated after 11 years together.[80]
Schreiber has been in a relationship with Taylor Neisen since 2017. They married in July 2023 and their daughter was born in August 2023.[81][82]
Schreiber has lived in a loft apartment in Noho, in Lower Manhattan in New York City, that was shown in Architectural Digest.[83]
Philanthropy
On July 6, 2022, Liev Schreiber became the ambassador of United24, a fundraising platform for Ukraine in the field of medical care.[84]
In an address published on the President's website, Zelenskyy said that BlueCheck Ukraine, founded by the actor, had funded programs for psychological support and evacuation of more than 20,000 orphans from boarding schools and orphanages in Kharkiv, Dnipro, Chernihiv, and Odesa regions. He also partnered with an organization called "Kidsafe" which had rescued over 10,000 women and children from war worn areas of Ukraine.[85]
On August 16, 2022, Schreiber and another ambassador, famous Ukrainian footballer Andriy Shevchenko, visited Kyiv and held talks with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. Schreiber and Shevchenko also visited Bucha and Borodianka, which were heavily damaged by Russian bombardment.[86]
^Westbrook, Caroline (November 23, 2005). "Liev Schreiber". SomethingJewish.co.uk. Archived from the original on October 27, 2020. Retrieved May 12, 2018.
^ abcd"Liev Schreiber (visual voices guide)". Behind The Voice Actors. Retrieved October 4, 2024. A green check mark indicates that a role has been confirmed using a screenshot (or collage of screenshots) of a title's list of voice actors and their respective characters found in its credits or other reliable sources of information.