Liev recommends: "In a little play I did called "Hamlet", Polonius says to his son Laertes, 'to thine own self be true'. That's the best advice I could give to anyone going into the film business. There are so many models, forms, ideas, opinions, opportunities. The temptation is to become a contortionist in trying to be a success. But the reality is that the only thing of value you have to offer the film industry is you. If you aren't in touch with yourself and you aren't doing something that is meaningful to you, it's not going to matter to anyone else.

"Too often people in the movie business see something that works and they want to mimic it, re-create it. Paul Newman gave me great advice. He said, 'If you've done it before, why do it again?' The point is, don't be derivative. Whether you're acting or producing or directing, you have to reinvent your work all of the time. And if you do, you will keep yourself entertained and therefore keep an audience entertained."

Article transcribed by Marla

IN the summer of '69, Marty Kantrowitz, the character Liev Schreiber plays in the new movie ''A Walk on the Moon,'' is stuck in Brooklyn fixing televisions while his wife is having a affair with a sexy vagabond in the Catskills and getting stoned at Woodstock.

In the summer of '69, Liev Schreiber was all of 2 years old, chasing a black Labrador retriever around a house in British Columbia. But he was directly affected by the '60s all the same. His parents, Tell and Heather, divorced when he was 4. Dad now lives on an island near Seattle. Mom's in an ashram in Virginia.

''You would expect our generation to be a bunch of freaks who wanted to sleep with everything we could, but I find that in myself and in my friends, even those who work in the film business, there's this notion that 'I've got to maintain this relationship,''' Schreiber says.

Lounging in the lobby of an Upper East Side movie theater, where a charity screening of ''A Walk on the Moon'' is showing, the tall, broad-shouldered actor runs his fingers through his thick shock of black hair and adjusts the lapels of his natty pinstriped suit.

''I think it's a backlash about what our parents learned from free love,'' he continues. ''We all have this tremendous urge for sex. But we have seen where that ends up.''

In ''A Walk on the Moon,'' which did huge business in this city when it opened over the weekend, Schreiber portrays a young husband and father who married his girlfriend Pearl (Diane Lane) when she became pregnant at 17. Early marriage and fatherhood meant the end of talented Marty's college dreams, and also circumscribed Pearl's world by giving her an identity as a wife and mother before she really knew who she was.

Schreiber, who lives in Manhattan, says the film is about ''that separation of society and self that became the 'Me Generation,' where people said they would look into their own problems now, and lay off the problems of their children, their family and their country.

''That was really affirmative for a lot of people, but like I said, there's a price to pay.''

At 31, Schreiber's career is steadily building steam. After making his film debut in the 1994 indie classic ''Party Girl,'' the Yale-trained thesp broke through in 1996, with the release of three films proving his range in several genres: as a kidnapper in the mainstream Mel Gibson thriller ''Ransom,'' as Parker Posey's pretentious boyfriend in the indie comedy ''The Daytrippers'' and as the accused killer in ''Scream.''

He went on to star with his idol, Dustin Hoffman, in the Barry Levinson sci-fi flop ''Sphere,'' and is now in London preparing to play his richest and most important role yet: as young Orson Welles in ''RKO 281,'' a drama about the wunderkind's struggle to make ''Citizen Kane.''

Though he's mastered the craft of acting, Schreiber maintains he's still learning how his parents' divorce affected him emotionally.

''I think there was a period when I felt that there was a certain kind of futility about relationships,'' says the actor, whose height (he's 6 feet, 2 inches) makes him stand out in a crowd. ''But what really happened, I think, was that I resented my parents for not working hard enough, so I resolved to work harder myself.''

Schreiber has never married, but he ''absolutely'' looks forward to having a wife and children someday.

''I know this probably sounds totally selfish, but it's probably like, when you have a child, you feel that now your life means something,'' he says. ''And I think for me that is huge. I've always struggled with that. I've always wanted to feel like I was doing the right thing, and not just wasting my time.''

Unable to look to his parents as anything but an example of what not to do, Schreiber says he's always considered his grandfather Alex as a role model. He even based his performance as Marty on the man.

''He was an incredibly hard worker. He delivered meat to diners in New York City. He would get up at 5 o'clock in the morning. Till he was 80 he was doing this. He was this real mensch,'' the actor says.

Early in his life, Schreiber's grandfather took his then-love for granted, and lost the woman to another man. ''He moved on, but his heart was broken for the rest of his life. And he met someone else, and worked and worked on that relationship, and it paid off until the day he died.''

The '60s brought a lot of good and necessary changes to society, Schreiber says, but as a member of Generation X, with what he describes as its ''cult of cynicism,'' the actor can't help looking fondly on the virtues of his grandfather's America.

''We often put down the '40s and '50s, because it seems like such a square period, but there was an awful lot of idealism around,'' he muses. ''A lot of it was no doubt based on the war, and on the idea that one had a duty to one's country and one's God. All of these things had a way of creating valuable by-products in society. Your duty to family and society was everything.''

But, he says, ''It all fell apart in the '60s,'' he says, later quipping, ''They had the party, we got the hangover.''

''Look at the way our generation dealt with the Clinton sex crisis,'' Schreiber says, with scorn in his voice. ''Our generation was like, 'Oh sure he's [having sex with] her, don't they all?' There wasn't much talk among our generation about the moral repercussions of the president of the United States screwing a 24-year-old intern in the Oval Office. To us, that was just a given.''

Article transcribed by Angie

Liev Schreiber, who plays Lane's husband in A Walk on the Moon, is known for playing eccentric characters.

"I come by it naturally," says the star of Scream, Scream II, The Daytrippers, Sphere and Mixed Nuts.

"My mom defines eccentric. She's a cross between superman and Dustin Hoffman's character in Midnight Cowboy."

Schreiber was born in San Francisco, but was raised in Nelson, B.C.

"My parents were political hippies. They snuck into Canada to become farmers," he says.

"When I was four, my mom left my dad and took me with her to New York.

"She was cab driver for a while, then she made paper mache puppets to sell on the street in Greenwich Village. Eventually, she opened a health food store and tried out all her latest concoctions on me."

Schreiber says when he learned that Mortensen was going to play the lover in A Walk on the Moon, he immediately headed for the gym.

"I had to have some definition in my body if I was going to take my shirt off in the same movie that Viggo runs around naked in.

"Trust me, that's mighty intimidating."

Article transcribed by Angie

All's well that ends Welles

All's well that ends Welles Preparing for his latest film, A Walk on the Moon, was hardly a stroll in the park for Liev Schreiber. "I knew I was up against Viggo Mortensen," says Schreiber, 31, of his romantic rival for Diane Lane. "Come on, the guy is easy on the eyes, and he doesn't wear a lot of clothes in this movie. If anyone was to believe that I [might get] the girl, I was going to have to do some work. So I jumped ripe, I ran, and I didn't eat.' Schreiber will have to pack on the pounds for his next project, the HBO movie RKO 281. "It's about the making of Citizen Kane. I'll play Orson Welles," he reports. "I'm getting that Welles voice going. And I'm eating as much as I possibly can."

Article transcribed by Angie

Schreiber uses love, humor to tune in to role of family man

NEW YORK -- To play a stand-up guy in "A Walk on the Moon," Liev Schreiber looked no further than his childhood.

"In the Jewish vernacular, there's a term, mensch,"says Schreiber. "My grandfather was the mensch of mensches. He's the guy who raised me."

His mother's father died before Schreiber started work on "A Walk on the Moon," but Schreiber recalls how he would rise at 5 a.m. to pick up meat from the market and then deliver it to diners all over New York.

"And at the same time, he was this guy who was a cellist, a lover of classical music and fine art, all this really cool stuff," Schreiber tells reporters gathered for an interview in Midtown.

In "A Walk on the Moon," which opens today at Downtown West, Schreiber, 31, plays Marty Kantrowitz, husband of Pearl (Diane Lane) and father of two (Anna Paquin, Bobby Boriello). When Pearl starts rebelling along with the rest of society in the summer of 1969, Marty has to decide how much he is willing to take and how much he is willing to give.

"The relationship between these two is very powerful, and not entirely sexual," Schreiber says. "I mean, it's very sexual, but it's also powerful on other levels.

"Emotionally, she's realizing that she's a bigger person than she was, and maybe that means getting rid of this guy. So you've got to find a way to get back to him."

Schreiber tried to provide the path by giving Marty a sense of humor and by making him a deeply loving father. He didn't see how he could rival Viggo Mortensen, who plays the salesman with whom Pearl begins an affair.

"Viggo's already cornered the market on animal magnetism and everything else you get when he takes his clothes off, which you can tell I have real confidence about," says Schreiber.

Not that he didn't get to bare some flesh as Marty. "I was taking it (his shirt) off more than I'd ever done in my life," says Schreiber. "I was trying to keep up."

Typically Schreiber isn't cast as a family man or a standard romantic lead. He's probably best known for playing convicted killer Cotton Weary in "Scream" and exonerated Cotton in "Scream 2."

In other films, such as "Ransom," "Denise Calls Up," "The Daytrippers" and "Walking and Talking," Schreiber has been put to good use as a neurotic and offbeat boyfriend or pal. With "Denise," "Daytrippers" and "Walk on the Moon," Schreiber has fashioned a trilogy that runs the gamut of relationships.

"All of those characters are amplifications of my own emotions or paranoia or neuroses about relationships," he says. "I deal with all those things, except I deal with them more cohesively than those characters do.

"The guy in 'Denise Calls Up' feels very isolated. The guy in 'Daytrippers' is very neurotic. I think the guy in 'Walk on the Moon' is very reliable."

Schreiber likes playing characters who are flawed. "I've just always been interested in the kinds of characters who represent what I think is a very large cross-section of humanity, and that is people who tend to identify with foibles and shortcomings more than they do strengths and achievements," he says.

Schreiber has been working nonstop lately, with film roles in "Phantoms," "Sphere," "Twilight" and the upcoming "Spring Forward," "Jakob the Liar," "Lazarus and the Hurricane," "Hamlet" and his current production, "RKO 281," in which he's playing Orson Welles. He also tries to do a play or two every year.

By choice, he works mostly in independent films, but he shows up in studio films occasionally. "I like to work a lot with independent filmmakers; I like to work with first-time directors," says Schreiber. "And I don't get paid a lot for that; neither does anyone else, really.

"So I get to the point where I need to make money. If I can make one film that'll support me for two or three years to make these other movies, I'll do it."

Article transcribed by Angie

In February I had the unique opportunity to interview Liev Schreiber. Liev has worked non-stop in the past few years, starring in films like Ransom, Walking and Talking, The Daytrippers, Sphere, Twilight, and both Scream films. I was surprised to find out that not only is Liev very familiar with The Valley, but that he's a graduate of Hampshire College as well. This struck a particular chord with me because I'll be a student at Hampshire in the fall, and having someone I respect as much as Liev also have gone there is, well, pretty special.

In addition to portraying Hamlet on stage in November, Liev can be seen on the big screen this fall as Laertes in Hamlet. His current film A Walk On The Moon, is in theaters now.

What did you want to grow up to be when you were a little kid? Did you always want to be an actor?

No, no. I think I wanted to be an elevator operator, and then I wanted to be a dentist. I think I liked jobs that had buttons to push.

Buttons to push…

Yeah, I liked pushing the buttons. I didn't really realize I was interested in acting until I got to Hampshire. It wasn't until college…when I was a little kid I just liked pushing buttons.

Who inspired you to act?

I remember my mother would take me to plays and would take me to movies. We had a movie theater in my neighborhood in the Lower East Side, and they would show all these old movies. My mother sort of believed that I should only see old movies…(laughs) some sort of intellectual thing. And so I would watch Marx Brothers movies, which were my favorites, and Errol Fylnn and Basil Rathbon. Those were the guys that I thought it would be really cool to be them. I mean they just seemed so cool. I think that's originally my inspiration. Then as I got older and it became more of a serious option for me, I think people like Dustin Hoffman, and Meryl Streep, were always in the horizon and I thought they were doing excellent work. But theater was always really impressive to me. Theater actors, who nobody would really know their names, were sort of my biggest influences I think.

Is there anyone in particular today that you'd like to work with that you haven't yet?

(Reflectively) It's pretty remarkable the actors I've gotten to work with. I've been very lucky in that department. (Pause) You mean like a famous one right, that people would know?

Anybody.

Well, there's a guy Paul Giamatti, who went to Yale with me who I just think, is a tremendous actor. (*Author's note: Paul Giamatti was in "Saving Private Ryan" and "My Best Friend's Wedding" most recently.) I've always wanted to do something with him. But that won't mean anything to anybody really except for me and Paul.

I'm sure he'd be pleased to know that.

Well, I think some people now know who he is, but yeah he's definitely one of them. I'm trying to think of someone more famous… Boy, I think it'd be fun to work with Robert Duvall, I like him a lot.

Is there a character that you've played that you can relate to?

All of them.

All of them?

Of course! You play anyone you can't relate to.

Is there one more so than the others?

Probably Carl from "Daytrippers." (very long pause, I think he's waiting for me to ask the next question)

(Laughing) Is there, um, a reason?

Awww, I thought I was going to get away with the easy answer. (laughs) Um, because he kind of makes an ass of himself and really all he wants is all anybody else wants, which is to be loved. But in the service of being loved he makes a ripe old ass of himself.

I know you're a big Shakespeare fan -

Yes.

Any plays in particular that you'd like to do?

Well, I'm doing "Hamlet" this year.

Yes, I'm very excited about that!

Yeah… I like "The Winter's Tale" a lot. I would like to do Leontes in "Winter's Tale." I've always thought that was a great part. I also like very much Edward II, I think that's a gorgeous part.

What's the best compliment you've ever received?

Um… Oh actually, I was just talking to someone on the phone who had recently talked to my acting teacher from Yale, Earl Gister, and he was talking about the Three Layers of acting. The first layer is what people do naturally; what is natural. The second layer is what, technically, you bring to it. And the third layer is the socio-political element you add. And there are two kinds of actors: there are actors who understand that and try to apply all that to their work, then there are actors who do that naturally - this is a conversation my acting teacher was having with a women who he didn't know knew me. And she told me that he said to her, "Do you know that actor Liev Schreiber?" and she said, "Yes, I know who he is," and he said "Well, he's one of those guys who just does that naturally." And I thought that that was…you know, cause he was my acting teacher. I admired the guy so much. Having him say that to someone he didn't know knew me was probably one of the greatest compliments I've ever gotten.

If you were to put out a record, what type of music would it be?

I think I would do one like Leonard Nimoy. Do you know Leonard Nimoy's album?

I know who he is, but I've never heard his album.

Well he's got an album called The Two Sides of Leonard Nimoy. And I guess the whole idea was he was trying to show what a diverse actor he was, cause he'd been doing all that logical stuff - you know, Spock, kinda dead pan. So he cut an album and he called it The Two Sides of Leonard Nimoy, and one side was all "happy" songs, or like, wild songs, and the B side was all logical, sort of serious songs. I think I'd do something like that. The Two Sides of Liev Schreiber.

Sounds good! I'll be looking for that…"in a record store near me."

Thank you.

Let's talk about Cotton Weary for a moment, your character from the "Scream" films. Did you try to play him as misunderstood, or did you try and go for the meaner side of him?

Well, the way you just described it is not the way one normally looks at a part, because those are judgments made from the outside in. If you're being someone, if you're playing a character, you can't really play "misunderstood," because "misunderstood" is a feeling that somebody else has…

Do you know what I mean?

Yeah, I see what you're saying.

Or "the bad guy" is sort of a judgment that somebody else makes by your actions. I think that people felt that Cotton was misunderstood, or that he was the bad guy is good - those are story elements that you want them to take away from the film so that they can have some fun with it. In ["Scream"] I really didn't do anything except walk down some stairs and get into a car. In the second one, I knew that part of what we were trying to do was keep some Red Herrings about who did what and when and where. So I think I consciously kind of fooled around with a kind of malevolence that may have lead people to think, "Oh, he's the bad guy!" But I think the reality of who Cotton was is that…Cotton just wants his share of the sunshine. He's a guy who was put into prison for something he didn't do, and he's trying to get his life back together, and the only option he has is to participate in this story that rocked this small town. And he's aggressive about it.

Any plans for Scream 3?

Yeah, I hear they do have plans for "Scream 3." I'm not sure if I'm doing it though.

Would you be interested in playing Cotton again if they had the character return?

Yeah! I think it's an interesting story, it's fun, you know? It's a lot of fun for a lot of people, so I'd be interested in it. I just don't know the details of when and where they're making it. I'm going away for a while and they might be starting it soon, so I don't know. I haven't heard anything from anyone, so right now it's all speculative.

What are your favorite films?

I loved a film with Peter Sellers, called "Being There." That's probably one of my all-time favorite films. I liked very much - well, ya see I don't necessarily like to act in them, but I love sci fi. I think it's one of the great things about movies. I like science fiction movies because it's that whole sort of fantasy world that special effects can handle… all of that stuff we can't really do in theater as well. So I really loved "Bladerunner." I also "Alien," and of course I love "Star Wars." "8 &fraq12;" is an incredible movie. I've always loved movies… I like "Duck Soup" a lot. "A Day At The Races." A lot of Marx Brothers movies.

Have you ever, watched your films in a public theater with an audience?

Yeah. The first time I did it there was nobody in the theater except for my mom, my two brothers, and like, one other guy who was asleep in the front row.

What film was that?

"Mixed Nuts."

Did you like the experience?

It was OK. It wasn't anything special. Usually by the time a film is released at the theater I've seen them a few times, so they're kind of boring for me to see. (laughs) Because you know it so well. Obviously the spontinaitenty has been taken out of it for you. But it's exciting to wonder what people are thinking as they're watching it.

Could you tell me something about you that would surprise me?

Hmmm…

Or, ya know - shock me. Whatever!

Surprise or shock you…? Um, I'm very very short?

(both shocked and surprised) You're very very short? How tall are you?

Well wouldn't that surprise you if I were?

(laughing) That would, yes, that would surprise me very much so!

(laughing) OK!

Mission accomplished.

No, let's see here. I don't know, what kind of thing shocks you?

I - I don't know! Um…if you said that…

I have six toes?

Yeah! That would surprise me, I suppose.

(regretfully) I don't have six toes though. Oh! That I went to school at Hampshire!

Yes!

So there you go.

It pleasantly surprised me, and, it was slightly shocking actually! OK.

Great. If you can compare theater and film, which one do you enjoy more?

I enjoy different things about both. The semiotics of film are really exciting and different, and understanding the visual language to acting in a film is something very different from acting on stage. It's difficult to compare them because the are completely different animals, but I think I actually enjoy the feeling of acting on the stage more. It's just more cohesive and there's more continuity to a performance on stage then there is to acting in a film.

Who is the funniest person you ever met?

Adam Sandler made me laugh pretty hard when I worked with him on "Mixed Nuts." But he's much funnier in real life then he is in the movies...

Dustin Hoffman is pretty funny too…but looks aren't everything. (laughs)

And um… (trying to elaborate) this is hard…

Dustin and Adam are good.

OK.

When you were first getting started, did people suggest you change your name?

Yes. They did several times.

So why didn't you?

(laughing) Because it's my name.

(laughing) That's kind of a dumb question!

No, it's not a dumb question, it's a good question. My answer is that it's my name, and I don't see why I should change my name. It's part of what makes me who I am. And I think that to deny ethnicity or to deny color or anything that makes you you, and by that, more human and more normal, is valuable as an actor. It'd be terrible if we were all named Tom Jones. There would be a huge cross section of our community that was excluded if all of the actors were white guys with blond hair named Tom Jones.

I'm going to ask you if you have any memorable fan stories, but first I have to tell you something... I'm a regular on Angie's site.

Oh yeah?

I am Movie Gal!

You're Movie Gal?! Oh shit, hey Movie Gal!

I was a little hesitant to tell you that.

Oh, that's OK. I was actually going to say, all the gifts you guys sent me. It was so cool! It was just so...cool, and so special. The star, from the National Star Registry, and the actual glass star. I was just so...first of all, I thought actors like me, you know, people didn't "follow". I sort of assumed that was more for the, sort of good-looking set--

Oh com'on!

Well, you know, like, leading men, more famous people! I don't do a lot of press and I don't have a lot of exposure. People take pictures of me at parties and things like that, but it's not like I volunteered those. I don't do a lot of press... I was surprised that people knew about me, or that people liked me. I was so flattered that they liked me so much they were willing to talk about it. To open a website and see that there were people talking about you. The conversations you guys would get into - well, sometimes I was just flattered and it was all really silly, but other times I was really kind of proud and impressed. A lot of the things you guys have said about my work...(laughs) I agree with. It's like the things I have been trying to do with my work! Trying to represent a more familiar cross section of humanity that has been allowed in the entertainment industry, and the most heroic thing about anybody, even in the movies, is that they're simply human.

I play those kinds of characters, and the fact that people like and identify with those kinds of characters - basically themselves - is a huge emotion thing for me. It's very satisfying.

I can't even get on the site anymore. It's not that it's crowded, but my computer doesn't work right. All this stuff happens, and it keeps saying to re-try again later or something, it's full now or something like that. But it's not full! It's just that my computer doesn't do it right. I'm bad with the computer. I never check it. I go away for two or three months at a time, and I'll come back and look.

It's great to know that you're acknowledging it.

Aw com'on, if someone had a webpage about you wouldn't you?

I'm a big believer in what you don't know can't hurt you. I'd be insanely curious, but I don't know if I actually would look.

Of course you would! If someone were writing and talking about you, and following your work, and you cared about your work, and what people thought of it, you would totally! You'd wanna know.

What do you think about some of the recent posts at the site? Have you read them?

Which ones are those?

Oh, there's been discussion about…well…

What? I didn't see it, what?

People have been posting…what could be considered, like, fantasy-type-nothing explicit or anything, but-

You mean like sex fantasies? Really?

Not me, thank you very much!

My god, I gotta get on the Web! (we both laugh) Well, there's nothing wrong with a healthy imagination, that's what I always say. That's what got me in all the trouble I am now.

Yeah, I wasn't sure you had seen them or not.

No, no I haven't - I gotta read them. What are they like? People talking about sleeping with me or something?

Kind of…

Really? Do they get graphic?

No, no! I mean, this wasn't like… for the most part we on the site just stick to your movies and all that stuff, not (laughing) you know.

Well, I don't think that anybody really wants to sleep with me. It's part of celebrity thing. I think part of why I shouldn't read those things is because it's an outlet for people to express themselves. I mean, that's really all you are as an actor or celebrity a lot of times, just an outlet for people to vent about themselves. It's much less about you then you think it is.

And plus, a lot of the posters don't know that you have been to the site; that you read the posts.

Yeah, I figured that I shouldn't let people know that I'm on the site. Because it really is theirs, it's not mine.

But it is yours. It's all for you.

I'm a common theme, that's all.

Who would you love to play, like a historical figure?

Well I'm going to England to play Orson Wells. I kinda like that. But it's hard; I don't really like playing historical figures. They're very hard to play because audiences tend not to like them, or audiences tend no to be as interested in them because the person owns a piece of history in their mind; the person actaully existed. And the reason I believe the reason we go to movies is to see ourselves, we become involved in whatever the story is and we become the central character. And people are less prone to identify with a character they know existed; it takes some of the fantasy out of it for them. And I kinda don't like that as much, I think it's a tricky thing to do.

If you do play someone historical you have to find whatever that nook of humanity that they people watching will think, "That's not Orson Wells, that's me." But playing historical characters makes that job more difficult.

Is there parts that you would've liked to play that have already been done, like Willy Wonka or something?

(astonished) Was Willy Wonka a real guy?

No, no, this is a different question! A non-historical, made-up part!

Oh, OK! (laughing) Well geez, I wanna be Zorro just as much as the next guy. When I was a little kid I always wanted to be Zorro. But I just don't think they're ready for Liev Schreiber as Zorro.

Oh, who knows!

Well, it'd be a whole different thing.

This is kind of silly, but are you a good dancer? I mean, I've seen your moves as Chris in "Mixed Nuts," and…

I am a great dancer. I have always played very bad dancers, but it takes a good dancer to play a bad dancer.

And last but CERTAINLY not least…Liev, will you go to the prom with me?

I'd love to.

©Copyright MovieGal99 1999

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New York's next Hamlet has been keeping busy catching London's current one, Paul Rhys (late of"The Invention of Love"), who is currently playing the great Dane at the Young Vic Theater.

"There isn't a big market for the classics back home," says Liev Schreiber ("A Walk on the Moon"), the 31-year-old New Yorker who has been in Britain playing Orson Welles in the forthcoming HBO film "RKO 281," about the making of"Citizen Kane." (Roy Scheider, Brenda Blethyn and Liam Cunningham co-star.)

And yet, adds Schreiber, who plays Laertes to Ethan Hawke's Hamlet in a forthcoming contempo film of the play, "when I'm doing classical theater, I feel engaged and all pistons running and like I'm on new territory, because the size of it is so much bigger and the scope so much broader."

To that end, Schreiber expects to begin rehearsals for his own turn as Hamlet around Oct. 12 with a mid-November start of previews at the Joseph Papp Public Theater Off Broadway, where previous Hamlets have included Diane Venora and (twice) Kevin Kline. The director will be Andrei Serban, who helmed Schreiber's acclaimed stint last summer as Iachimo (and, briefly, Jupiter) in the Central Park "Cymbeline."

Welles and Hamlet in the same year? Schreiber responds with a smile-turned-wince: "It's ludicrous; it's just a bad joke. It's like the most gigantic act of hubris ever."

When a Magnate Tried to Play Movie Censor

LONDON -- When Orson Welles made his masterpiece "Citizen Kane" in 1941, it was no secret that the film's protagonist, Charles Foster Kane, was a barely fictionalized version of William Randolph Hearst, the newspaper magnate whose enormous empire was then beginning to falter under a barrage of debts.

Stephen F. Morley/HBO

Liev Schrieber as Orson Welles, left, and John Malkovich as Herman Mankiewicz in HBO's "RKO 281."

But there was a drama behind the drama, as Welles -- then just 25 and swelled by the arrogance of youth and genius -- found himself up against the full force of Hearst's fury. Hearst was desperate to stop the film, no matter what the cost, and nearly succeeded in having it destroyed before it had ever been released.

Now the story of their battle is to be the subject of its own film. "RKO 281," which takes its name from "Citizen Kane's" working title at the RKO studio, will have its premiere on HBO in November.

The new film, which sets out to paint a vivid picture of prewar Hollywood before World War II as much as to describe the personal contest between two larger-than-life men, shows how Welles and the Hollywood screenwriter Herman J. Mankiewicz conceived of and wrote the script that became "Citzen Kane."

And it shows how Hearst, furious above all at the film's devastating portrait of Marion Davies, his longtime mistress, used every weapon in his power to try to bully and blackmail the heads of Hollywood's major studios into buying up and destroying every last print.

"RKO 281," whose lavish sets and starry cast -- including John Malkovich, Melanie Griffith, Liev Schrieber and James Cromwell -- helped drive up costs to the far end of HBO's usual $6 million to $10 million film budget, had its genesis in a PBS documentary several years ago. When the producer and director Ridley Scott saw the documentary, "The Making of Citizen Kane," he was transfixed by the story's dramatic potential.

"He came into the office like his hair was on fire and said, 'We've got to get this made into a movie,"' said Chris Zarpas, president of Scott Free Productions, Scott's company. What particularly excited Scott, said Zarpas, was Welles' effort to maintain artistic freedom and creative autonomy against the all-powerful Hollywood studio system.

(Scott had similar problems with his futuristic epic "Bladerunner," said Zarpas, in which he had to fight for his vision "against the studio Wonder Bread machine.")

But, whether by coincidence or because of a darker reason, Scott had his own troubles when he took the idea for "RKO 281" to Hollywood. None of the studios he approached would make the movie. It's unclear exactly why they turned down the idea.

But John Matoian, who was president of HBO Pictures and of HBO's New York arm, HBO NYC, when "RKO 281" began production (he has since been succeeded by Colin Callender), said that a film about Welles' struggles with the studio system might have been too close to the bone for Hollywood, even today.

"Ultimately, my guess is that it also gets to the very core of the art-versus-commerce nature of studio decision making and hits it very hard," he said.

Once HBO had taken the project on, the biggest challenge became how to portray characters that loom so large in America's recent history.

To play Orson Welles, who died in 1985, as a historical figure in the first place is a challenge, said Schreiber, lately of "A Walk on the Moon," whose glancing resemblance to the young Welles helped him procure the part (normally lanky, he gained 20 pounds through an all-food, all-the-time diet).

"I have a tremendous respect for him," said Schreiber. "He was a hero of mine long before I took this job, and it's difficult in any case to play contemporary historical figures, who own a relatively recent place in people's memories. I think it's a bad idea to try to mimic someone; I think you want to stay away from drawing comparisons and almost create him as a fictional character."

The film begins with a scene that is pure fiction: a white-tie banquet at San Simeon, Hearst's enormous California estate, at which Welles is shown mingling with guests like Clark Gable and Carole Lombard. (The scene was shot here, in the grand Guildhall, one of many British locations that serve as San Simeon interiors.)

After managing to alienate and insult his host, Welles comes away from the evening with a burning desire to capture him on film, conceiving of him as an epic bully whose story is quintessentially, tragically American. He finds a perfect partner in the brilliant and self-destructive Mankiewicz (John Malkovich), a friend of Davies' who has long harbored dreams of writing about Hearst.

In reality, Hearst would never have invited Welles to San Simeon. But, said Ben Ross, the movie's director, "I don't think that sort of liberty is a disgraceful one, because it doesn't go against any fundamental truths about Welles."

"It's not supposed to be a literal interpretation," he added. "Once you start making a picture, what concerns me is dramatic integrity. We did take factual liberties, but if we got to the spiritual core of the story and the man, if we were able to convey a picture of Welles as a young filmmaker and what it was that made him want to make pictures, I think we'll be forgiven."

As far as Hearst goes, "RKO 281" presents him as Welles himself did in "Citizen Kane": as a megalomaniacal bully who wielded his power like a blunt instrument. But it shows another, more tender, side of him too, particularly in his relationship to Davies, with whom he lived for years because his wife would not grant him a divorce.

What infuriated him more than anything about "Citizen Kane," perhaps, was its callous use of a piece of gossip that probably came from Mankiewicz: Rosebud, as it happened, wasn't just a child's sled, but Hearst's private name for his mistress' genitalia.

"He was spoiled, rich and self-serving, but he was also generous, loving and humorous," said James Cromwell, who plays Hearst (he also played the farmer in "Babe" and the corrupt police official in "L.A. Confidential"). Long involved in left-wing politics, Cromwell has always hated Hearst's awesome political sway and his family's power, which made him a particularly interesting choice for the part. It also sent him back to biographies of Hearst and caused him to re-evaluate the man a bit.

"I guess I'm learning not to look at things in black and white," said Cromwell. "He did a great deal of damage, but he was also a guy trying to do the best he could."

As Davies, Melanie Griffith is also taking the opportunity to rehabilitate her character's reputation, a reputation sealed by Dorothy Comingore's devastating portrayal of Davies in "Citizen Kane" as a shallow, spoiled gold digger with a voice that could shatter glass at 100 yards. Years later, Welles himself said he regretted what he had done to Davies in the movie.

As "RKO 281" points out, Davies, a one-time showgirl, genuinely loved Hearst, at one point selling her jewelry to help him out when financial ruin seemed imminent. She was also a gifted comic actress who was badly served by her lover's misguided attempts to turn her into an opera star.

"I felt I had a chance to show her in another light, and maybe change people's opinion of her," Ms. Griffith said. "I don't believe she was an idiot at all. I've tried to give her some depth and feeling."

Always looming in the background, of course, was the shadow of Welles, the great filmmaker who went into a long, slow decline in the years after "Citizen Kane," beaten down by his struggles with the studios and by the tentacles of Hearst's influence (among other things, Hearst refused to allow even a single mention of "Citizen Kane" in any of the newspapers in his considerable empire).

In making their self-referential film about the making of a film, producers and actors alike had to contend with their feelings about Welles' legacy.

"Welles is one of the few filmmakers I feel I've lived with for a long time; there isn't a frame of his pictures that I don't know," Ross said. "And I think there's a parallel between him and every filmmaker who ever tried to make an independent picture."

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