He'll Call You

In both of his new movies , Denise Calls Up and Walking and Talking, self-effacing actor Liev Schreiber plays characters obsessed with phone sex. Typecasting or coincidence? "I don't fucking know," he mutters. "Those two films are playing back-to-back at New Directors, New Films [at New York's Museum of Modern Art]. It's going to be my undoing."

The 28 year old actor shyly admits to trying phone sex himself, but is quick to add, "The whole idea of some woman nursing her baby, frying yams over a hot stove while she's psychologically jerking me off is just not appealing, and I'm convinced that that is what happens on the other end of the phone."

Schreiber's break came when the Yale drama school grad was cast as a drag queen in 'Mixed Nuts'. He has nine films under his belt in all, including a turn as a comic roadside distraction in 'Mad Love'. He often works with female directors ( Nora Ephron, Antonia Bird, Daisy von Scherler Mayer, Nicole Holofcener), but confesses to being unable to sustain a romantic relationship. The present state of his love life? "It's nil," he admits. "And it's not helped by the fact I'm working all the time."

Currently, Schreiber is shooting 'Ransom' in New York with Mel Gibson, and has another independent film, 'The Daytrippers', in the can. It's a varied body of work, but there is one constant in all of his performances: "I like characters that admit what assholes we are," he says. "People try so hard not to be idiots, but we are idiots, and that's endearing. We act like Romeo but we end up looking like Buster Keaton."

Article transcribed by Leigh Huntington-Price

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The Next Wave

Let’s add Smoking to the title of the film Walking and Talking. At any given moment during a six-hour photo shoot, at least three out of the five stars of this indie comedy can be caught mooching, lighting, or dragging on butts – or squashing them into the Long Island beach, which today doubles as the world’s largest sand-filled ashtray. Let’s add Working to the title too. All five actors have converged here en route to projects that as hot as a lit match. Not that finding, auditioning for, and landing good parts is so easy. "I’ve read nine scripts in the last week," laments Liev Schreiber. "Everybody wants to make a movie about a flood, a volcano, an earthquake, or a twister. Where do I fit in? I’d be the guy running from the falling building. Oh, I love auditioning for these movies." The only thing he runs from in Walking and Talking is commitment. The film, examines the intricacies of friendship between two women and three mean ("The guys are all so cute," sighs Anne Heche) who love and don’t love them. "If you get people to a place that’s real," says Schreiber, "their smallest problems are interesting and very touching." And speaking of touching: "This is the second movie that I’ve had phone sex in," he notes, fumbling for a smoke. So how do you audition for that? "I’ve tried to have phone sex, but it’s just a little too much make-believe for me. I have enough trouble playing make-believe when I’m having sex, let alone phone sex." Catherine Keener strolls by, cigarette in hand. "Hey sweetie," he beckons, "got a light?"

Catherine Keener:
Major Credits: Johnny Suede, Living in Oblivion, and the upcoming Box of Moonlight.
Tattle Tale: "Liev stole all my good lines. We would rehearse and then get into the scene, and this line that I wanted to improvise would come out of his mouth!"
Love Connection: married for five years to actor Dermot Mulroney.
Magic 8-Ball Question: "Everything I’m dying to know is too sad. . . Are my dog’s hips going to get better? He has bad hips."
Answer: YES, DEFINATELY

Anne Heche:
Major Credits: Another World Emmy winner, Films: Girls in Prison, Milk Money, I’ll Do Anything, Pie in the Sky, The Juror, and the upcoming Donnie Brasco.
Ever been on the Couch?: "Oh God, yeah. I’ve been in therapy since I was eighteen. It’s an hour block that is selfish time for me to say and feel whatever I want. Most of us ignore ourselves too much of the time."
Love Connection: See below.
Magic 8-Ball Question: "Will I find true love, other than with myself?"
Answer: YES, DEFINATLEY

Todd Field:
Major Credits: Fat Man and Little Boy, Ruby in Paradise, Sleep With Me, Twister, and the upcoming Farmer and Chase and Stained Glass.
Love Connection: "I met my wife ten years ago in a bowling alley. I won her over by giving her a pin from Disneyland."
Funniest Home Video: "When my son was three, I walked into the bedroom and he was lying on the bed with an erection. He was swinging it around saying, ‘My sword! My sword!’"
Magic 8-Ball Question: "Will our next child be a boy?"
Answer: REPLY HAZY, TRY AGAIN. Then: YES, DEFINATLEY

Kevin Corrigan:
Major Credits: Lost Angels, GoodFellas, True Romance, Kiss of Death, Living in Oblivion, The Pallbearer, and the upcoming Trees Lounge and Kicked in the Head.
Love Connection: "I’ve been phasing out of one. We met when I was 21 and she was 24. We were in love and then we just kind of grew apart. It’s funny how you can hit it off chemically, and then the chemistry turns inside out."
Magic 8-Ball Question: "Will I ever meet Roddy McDowall? I want him to show me his Planet of the Apes stuff."
Answer: WITHOUT A DOUBT.

Liev Schreiber:
Major Credits: Yale School of Drama graduate. Films: Denise Calls Up, Mixed Nuts, Mad Love, and the upcoming Ransom.
Fun Facts to Know and Tell: "I have a very hairy butt. I didn’t, but then I did this drag movie and they waxed my butt and it got much harrier. Not only that – it was incredibly painful."
Love Connection: "I was in one for five years, and I’ve been out of one for four." (But not for long….)
Magic 8-Ball Question: "Does the very large woman love me?"
Answer: YOU MAY RELY ON IT

Liev Schreiber is homesick for New York. "Everybody eats fruit salad here,"he says wistfully, on the phone from California. "What I wouldn't give for a pastrami right now." Schreiber, who last fall played a scruffy kidnapper in Ron Howard's Ransom, is in Los Angeles shooting another big-budget project: The Magic Hour, {Note: This is now Twilight} starring Paul Newman and directed by Robert Benton. "I'm playing a heavy," he reports. "I've been doing that a lot this year, due to the success of Ransom. In Hollywood, you're only as good as your last part, so I'm exploring my dark side lately."

His occasional Hollywood forays aside, Schreiber, 29, has become the it-boy of New York indies, choosing to play antiheroes roiled with self-doubts and inner conflicts. His indelible performances have included neurotic media buff Jerry in Denise Calls Up, caddish slacker Andrew in Walking and Talking, and pretentious would-be novelist Carl in Greg Mottola's The Daytrippers, which opened last week.

"I like to play characters who have foibles and flaws, because I think they're very human," says Schreiber. "People say about may characters, `What a schlub that person is.' But I like to be able to take a character and say, `You know, he may be a schlub and a bore, but he's not so far from you.'"

Schreiber builds character through tiny, comic details. Jerry in Denise Calls Up drinks Pepto-Bismol from the bottle; Carl, in The Daytrippers, compulsively sports a tie. "Sometimes you approach a part and the text has all the answers," he says, "while other times, the damn thing just doesn't work until you put on the right pair of shoes." {Another Note: Liev stole this line from Olivier. I guess if you gotta steal, steal from the best.....}

In his own vision of the universe, Schreiber resembles his self-deprecating characters. "It was a conspiracy of events," he replies, when asked about becoming an actor. "I always wanted people to listen to me, and they never did. I think being onstage forces people to listen to you. It was also thoroughly enjoyable not being myself." He laughs. "I'm much more charismatic when I'm not myself."

Schreiber grew up in New York, the child of actor-theater director Tell Schreiber and painter Heather Schreiber. His parents divorced when he was five, and he lived with this mother while he went to public school and then attended Brooklyn Tech and Friends Seminary. "My mom had a lot of jobs: she was a cabdriver, she started her own health-food product line, she made papier-mache puppets and sold them," he remembers. "But she was a terrific artist and reinforced the idea that there was nothing more important in the world than art. She was trying to get me to read The Death of Ivan Ilyich by the time I was six."

Not many actors have a degree in semiotics, as Schreiber does from Hampshire College. As an undergraduate, he spent a year in England studying with faculty from the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts. After Hampshire, he went to Yale Drama School, graduating there in 1992. He has acted extensively in New York theater, including roles in Harold Pinter's Moonlight and in The Public Theatre's production of The Tempest in Central Park. "Doing plays charges the battery to do everything else," he says.

Though Schreiber would eventually like to try his hand at writing and directing, his acting commitments are keeping him busy. In addition to The Magic Hour, he is also shooting a sci-fi thriller called Phantoms for Miramax and will join Dustin Hoffman, Samuel Jackson, and Sharon Stone in Barry Levinson's Sphere.

It will no doubt be interesting to watch Schreiber's offbeat sensibility mesh with these high-profile ventures. He nonetheless has special affection for the indies, particularly The Daytrippers. "I remember sitting around with Parker Posey and she said to me, `Oh, you have to do this movie with me.' And I was like, `Yeah, like every other movie I've done with you, where neither of us gets paid and we're freezing our nuts off eating Ritz crackers at the fake crafts service table. I'm not going to make a movie where we don't get paid again.' She was browsing through the script but then she got a phone call and I just happened to open the script to the monologue about the man with the dog's head. And I was like, `Oh, brother. I'm going to do another free movie.'"

Article transcribed by Angie

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Details Magazine (December 1997)

Face to Face:
Two Shooting Stars Lighten Up

Photo by Richard Burbridge

She played Sean Connery’s daughter in The Rock. He was a kidnapper in Ransom. If you blinked, you missed them. But if you hang out at the local art-film-plex, you probably know Liev Schreiber and Claire Forlani. He played a porn freak in Walking and Talking and a Kafka-damaged novelist in The Daytrippers. She was an alluring siren with self-destructive tendencies in Basquiat and The Last Time I Committed Suicide. In 1998 they both move into the major leagues. He’s featured in Phantoms, Since You’ve Been Gone, The Blouse Man, Barry Levinson’s Sphere, and the new Robert Benton film. She stars in Basil, Elements, and Meet Joe Black with Brad Pitt. This interview is their first time working together.

Claire:
How are you, Liev?

Liev:
I’m okay. (Coughs) I’m sick. Every time I have a cigarette I feel really sick, but I can’t stop myself.

Claire:
Bummer. I look at smoking as a crutch, and as an actor I would like to strip away as many crutches as possible.

Liev:
Maybe what I’ll do is really, really smoke it up while I feel sick like this and it’ll be my farewell...So, Claire, where were you born?

Claire:
London. My parents were Italian and British. They live in Berkeley now—we all moved there four years ago.

Liev:
I was born n San Francisco but I was raised in New York City. I did a student-exchange program at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art in London. I had gone to school at Hampshire College. I was so exceedingly smart I graduated in three years. Then I got my master’s. I could open up a studio. I could be Master Liev. I could teach martial acting.

Claire:
I love the educated actors. There’s always something to talk about or listen to. I’m a college dropout.

Liev:
It doesn’t matter, though, because you’ve got an English accent. In our country you automatically sound literate. Even the Spice Girls sound literate. If you made a recording of the one who wore the big Captain America outfit at the MTV video awards and you recorded Norman Mailer and you played them to your average Joe, he’d probably think she was more literate. Norman Mailer talks like he’s one of the Brooklyn Dodgers.

Claire:
So what does being an actor mean to you?

Liev:
I don’t know. If a bunch of aliens flew down to this planet and saw all these movies, they would think, "Why do they spend so much time and money telling each other stories?" It’s kind of wonderful. Did you have much training?

Claire:
I went to a private arts school. We had to wear cloaks.

Liev:
That’s the best thing about the English: training—and the fact that they subsidize the arts. Here, you go see Cats and it’s like $100. In England, I saw Anthony Hopkins and Judi Dench in Antony and Cleopatra for six bucks.

Claire:
I just finished Meet Joe Black with Hopkins. We had this problems with my first scene with him, ‘cause he only does three or four takes. I turned to him and said, "You’ve done a hundred films and won an Oscar, and I haven’t done anything; you’re going to do as many takes as I do." But when we hit take 30 he was looking at me like Can’t you just remember your fucking lines, sweetheart? I play Hopkins’ daughter. Brad Pitt plays death. With him, dying isn’t so bad. And I did a movie called Basil with Jared Leto and Christian Slater. And this independent film, Elements, with Rob Morrow. It’s about these three people—

Liev:
That was a great script, it’s all about a triangle relationship. I wanted to be in it but they wouldn’t let me.

Claire:
Have you worked with anybody you’ve been in love with?

Liev:
Peter O’Toole and Dustin Hoffman. I did ‘em both. (Laughs)

Claire:
You did?

Liev:
Well, no, but I thought about it.

Claire:
What was Hoffman like?

Liev:
Hoffman, he’s a monster. We did a movie called Sphere together. He’s really my personal inspiration. He started out as a funny-looking Jewish guy and captured a huge audience. He was one guy who came along and said, This character is who the audience is, this is who we are—we stumble, we bump into things, we don’t always make it, we don’t always get the girl.

Claire:
It was like Jennifer Grey for me in Dirty Dancing.

Liev:
Oh, and I did Paul Newman.

Claire:
Sounds like you had a very interesting year.

Liev:
Yeah, I had an incredible year with movie stars, but I can’t talk about them.

Claire:
Oh, God! How ‘bout I call you later?

Article transcribed by Angie

by Fred Cohn

Liev Schreiber has made a splash over the past few years with highly regarded performances in a small-scale independent films like The Daytrippers and Walking and Talking. Even the two mega-grossing Scream movies (in which Schreiber plays the ambiguous Cotton Weary) came in on budgets well below those of average studio offerings.

"They feed you better on studio pictures," he says. "On the independents, you're lucky to get a Ritz cracker."

Big budgets bring big expectations, but Schreiber says he was able to ignore any anxiety from the Warner's front office. "For me, coming in as 'supporting guy', there's not much pressure," he says. "For someone like Dustin -- who's gotta carry these movies and carry his career and carry this burden of being a successful film star -- it's probably a little more nerve-wracking."

Much of the movie was shot underwater, in a studio tank, requiring the actors to get scuba training. No problem for Schreiber, who's an experienced recreational diver. "Doing this for me was like going to Epcot Center -- it was amazing," he says. "The day we all met, the first think we did was put on this diving gear and get into the swimming pool. It was amazing to see Dustin and Sharon Stone and Sam Jackson, all diving around like three-year olds."

Article transcribed by Tiff

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