Liev Schreiber, the Lower East Side-raised stage-and-screen actor lauded for roles ranging from Shakespeare’s Macbeth to Marvel’s Sabretooth, grew up fascinated by another distinctly handsome Tony Award winner known for his acting duality—Basil Rathbone, the stage actor and 14-time Sherlock Holmes of 30s and 40s cinema. But it wasn’t Rathbone’s defining detective role that entranced the future Yale School of Drama and Royal Academy of Dramatic Art-trained actor—it was his swashbuckling villains. “Everyone says villains are thankless parts, but those are really the best roles,” says Schreiber, who, at 47, has himself evolved into a Tony Award-winning actor and professional malefactor who can both swing a sword (he loves fencing) and carry a series. In anticipation of July’s third-season return of Showtime’s Ray Donovan, in which Schreiber stars as the eponymous Hollywood fixer, we review the biographical dossier of America’s foremost Bard devotee.
HE IS so committed to Shakespeare that he has schemed as Iago, sleazed as Iachimo, dreamed of playing Richard III—alas, at six feet three, Schreiber fears he is too tall—and “can’t imagine dying without getting the chance to play Lear.”
THE LEADING man of Schreiber’s early life was his maternal grandfather, Alex Milgram, a stoic gentleman whose influence was so profound that, Schreiber says, “every character I’ve ever played is in one way or another modeled after him.”
BLOOD RELATIONS include half-brother Pablo Schreiber, the Tony-nominated actor best known as *Orange Is the New Black’*s “Pornstache.” Schreiber has four other half-siblings from his bohemian mother, Heather, and his father, a Dartmouth-educated acting teacher.
HE CREDITS his Russian and Eastern European heritage for what he calls his “Slavic fat pads”—i.e., his pronounced cheeks.
THE DOWNTURNED arch of his eyebrows gives him a villainous resting expression. In real life, he laments his menacing visage because people “think I’m a lot meaner than I am.”
WHAT SHOCKS Schreiber is that he sired “such beautiful children”—his blond, blue-eyed sons, Alexander (named for Schreiber’s grandfather and called Sasha), seven, and Samuel (known as Kai), six. “But then, of course, they look like their mother,” he says, referring to his partner of 10 years, Oscar-nominated actress Naomi Watts.
THE SETTING for his first date with “Nai”—his nickname for Watts—was outside Magnolia Bakery in the West Village, where the two chitchatted over cupcakes (Schreiber prefers “the white ones”) on a park bench. “It was all very aboveboard,” assures Schreiber.
A FORMER bike messenger, Schreiber regularly totes his sons around New York on his beloved black Dutch work bike, which the boys call “Thunder.”
HOME BASE for the family and their 13-year-old Yorkie, Bob, is in N.Y.C.’s NoHo. However, while Schreiber is filming Ray Donovan, the family lives between Brentwood and Santa Monica, just close enough to the Pacific for frequent beach trips. (A boxer on and off for 15 years, Schreiber also surfs, although “not well.”)
HE CO-FOUNDED the ad agency Van’s General Store in late 2012 with advertising vet Scott Carlson. Schreiber helps scout business and pitches in with copywriting.
ONE HABIT from his days in ashram school—a chapter in his “eclectic” childhood—is meditation. He tries to practice every day for 20 minutes.
HE LIVED on vegetarian meals and black-and-white movies at the insistence of his mother until around the age of 12, when pastrami and Star Wars broke both spells.
HIS DRINK is a gin martini—up, dry, with olives.
HE SPEAKS a little French (learned in school), a bit of Russian (learned for a role), and some Spanish (learned “because I live in America”).
THE BEST gift he’s ever received was a black Steinway mini grand piano from Watts. Piano-playing ability, sadly, was not included. “I’ve probably spent the last eight years trying to learn the first page of the aria to the Goldberg Variations.”
HE PAID off approximately $70,000 in student loans after playing a suicidal transvestite in Nora Ephron’s 1994 comedy, Mixed Nuts, his first movie and the site of one humiliating memory: while rehearsing a dance scene with a co-star, a nervous Schreiber remembers fixating on how “inappropriate it would be if I got an erection while I was doing the fox-trot. … Sure enough, it happened.”
HE CRAVES another comedy project, although maybe not one involving the fox-trot.
DESPITE HIS intensive drama training, he had no qualms about appearing in the mainstream horror movie Scream. “For Shakespeare roles, I was making $300 or $400 a week. And suddenly Bob Weinstein at Dimension says, ‘I’ll pay you $20,000 to walk down a flight of stairs.’ ”
HIS FIRST brush with the Bard came during a sixth-grade production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream. He was in the band, playing Mendelssohn’s Wedding March on bass clarinet, and, he recalls, “I was thinking how ridiculous it looked onstage and how I thought I could do better.”
MORE COMFORTABLE onstage than in front of a camera, Schreiber says, “There’s nothing more exciting than that conversation you have with a live audience. It’s the best feeling in the world.”
