I’ve never thought of myself as a “serious” actor, so when I was asked to play Orson Welles, who is generally considered to be one of the greatest filmmakers of all time, I has some “serious” reservations. Faced with portraying someone as enigmatic and significant as Orson Welles – who also happens to be one of my idols – I wondered how a “serious” actor might approach it. The first thing I thought of was Robert De Niro’s incredible metamorphosis for Raging Bull. I decided if I was going to experiment with process, this would be a pretty good model. So I ate. Whenever I wanted, as much as I wanted. This was probably the single most fun thing: gaining 25 pounds, guilt-free. Everything I had ever read about Orson inevitably referred to his insatiable appetite for life – in particular, its more sensual and Epicurean aspects. He couldn’t seem to get enough, constantly almost filling himself almost to the point of bursting. As if he loved life so much, he had to consume vast quantities of it in order to contain it within himself. Or, as many biographers have surmised, his voracious appetite was an attempt to distract himself and avoid confronting a very deep and personal pain. Personally, I think it may have been a little of both. Orson was a multitalented guy, which facilitated my learning the fox-trot and a wide array of magic tricks; but of all the things I gained from this process, I think the 25 pounds will stay with me the longest! I’m not sure if it brought me any closer to Orson, but it certainly was my most enjoyable exploration of the process, and one I would recommend to anyone, “serious” actor or not.

Article transcribed by Angie

Back to Top

Playing Hamlet, Liev Schreiber talks the Bard’s talk with instinctive ease.

Like the character he will shortly be playing, Liev Schreiber has recently been sleeping the sleep of the haunted, and what he dreams is that he is standing in Wal-Mart without any pants. The dreams are alarmingly realistic: usually he’ll be waiting at the checkout counter, thumbing through an issue of Star magazine with Courteney Cox on its cover, when suddenly, he’ll look down and notice…

"Where could these dreams come from?" asks Schreiber. "From the huge exposure coming from this play? I think they must."

The play is Hamlet, which begins performances at the Public Theater on November 23. Schreiber, a 31-year-old actor most New Yorkers still can’t identify by face or name, was offered the title role last October, just two months after he gave a delicious, multiple-award-winning performance as Iachimo in the Central Park production of Cymbeline. He hadn’t been expecting this plummy invitation, naturally; the Public generally reserves the great Shakespearean roles for stage and Hollywood royalty, and Schreiber’s curriculum vitae had thus far included mostly independent films (The Daytrippers, Party Girl, A Walk on the Moon) and supporting roles Off Broadway. So when he first got the call from the office of George C Wolfe, the producer of the Public, Schreiber was prepared to walk in and pitch Leartes, the jealous tyrant of The Winter’s Tale.

"The H word didn’t even cross my mind," he says. "I thought, well, you know, be realistic. Work toward your strengths. Don’t get carried away."

Wolfe, mercifully, had his sights set a bit higher for Schreiber, who has had more experience with alarums and exeunts than most actors his age. Trained first at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts and then at Yale, Schreiber has done three Shakespeare plays in fairly quick succession at the Public, and practically all the critics who’ve seen him agree he has no equal in his own generation. He’s that rare American actor with an instinctive sense of Shakespeare’s rhythms and cadences; if he ordered a tuna-fish sandwich in iambic pentameter, no one would notice.

"It seems to me the only time Americans are bad a verse is when they try to imitate the English," he says. "And ironically, the dominant school of thought on acting in this county - naturalism - when combined with verse speaking gives and immediacy and freshness to Shakespeare, which can otherwise become kind of stentorian. It’s that way in many overstylized British productions. They play the broadness of the drama; ‘Isn’t this a great arcane dram we’re in! Aren’t these great costumes!’ Rather than: ‘I’ve killed your husband and now I want to fuck you!’"

He pumps his fist into the air, invigorated by just the thought of it. "It’s great stuff, you know. Great stuff."

Article transcribed by Angie

Liev Schrieber, the tall young actor who plays opposite Robin Williams in "Jakob the Liar," a Holocaust tale opening next week, says he would rather work on stage than on film -- and not just because he's slated to play the lead in "Hamlet" at the New York Shakespeare Festival.

"Movies are very difficult," he says. "The lifestyle is very difficult, also -- the traveling all the time, you're never home, hurry up and wait is a nightmare, I really hate that.

"The whole reason I really got into acting in the beginning was for a sense of community and for a feeling that I was having a relationship with an audience, I was having a relationship with people, I wasn't so isolated. Film, really, makes me just more isolated than anything.

"When you work in a theater you have an immediate relationship with an audience, you have some consistency, you're in the same place every day, you rehearse every day. I love it.

"And Shakespeare -- no one's going to change the script."

NEW LIEV: INDIES TO REAL HITS

Lewis Beale, New York Daily News

Liev Schreiber has appeared in 25 films, but it wasn't until he co-starred as convicted killer Cotton Weary in the Scream flicks that people, especially kids, began recognizing him on the street.  

"That's been nice," says the 31-year old actor. "As much as it freaks me out that kids are watching this, it's still nice that I have a relationship with them." 

Schreiber's relationship with his audience will only grow with last weekend's opening of Jakob the Liar, in which he co-stars with Robin Williams. 

Originally known for his work in independent movies like The Daytrippers and Denise Calls Up, Schreiber is now on the kind of career roll most actors only dream about. Classically trained (Yale, Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts), he received raves earlier this year playing a cuckolded husband in A Walk on the Moon; will portray Orson Welles in RKO 281, an upcoming HBO movie about the making of Citizen   Kane, and stars as Hamlet in a Public Theatre production set to open in New York in November.

"I'm finally at a place where I'm happy with what I do," says Schreiber. "I work all the time. So not everybody knows who I am -- that's good for me as an actor and as a person. And I get to do plays twice a year. I'm happy with that, and I would be happy if that's where I was in five years."

Schreiber's string of hits really began with A Walk on the Moon, in which he played a hard-working TV repairman whose wife (Diane Lane) has a fling with a hippie clothing salesman (Viggo Mortenson) during the summer of 1969. Schreiber turned a doormat role into a truly heroic character.

"He's a nice guy," says Schreiber of the part. "There's a tremendous value to nice guys, and we kind of forget that. It's amazing how sexy a man who loves his wife is, how sexy a man who's willing to change is. I love characters like that. I think audiences relate to that, and that if you really take a look at anyone's life, there's a sort of heroic epic there."     

The same could be said for Jakob. Robin Williams plays a Jew living in a Polish ghetto who fakes Allied radio broadcasts to raise the morale of his compatriots, and Schreiber portrays his buddy, Mischa, a former boxer and hothead who has a hard time taking guff from the Nazis.     

"He's sort of the muscle in the ghetto," says Schreiber. "He's always looking for a fight. And he doesn't think carefully before he acts. But he's got a good heart." 

Schreiber, who is half-Jewish, found the experience of filming in Poland and Hungary eye-opening. Though he knew family members had died during the Final Solution, Schreiber never, as he says, "really related to the Holocaust. I knew the history like everyone else, but my relationship to it was [that] long ago this terrible thing   happened. 

"Then I went to Poland, and saw these buildings with bullets in them, neighborhoods that were devastated, and I realized that is recent history, and that was kind of a shock to me. It was very vivid, and it became real to me."

What's an Actor to Do?
Too many roles, too little time. The ridiculously multitalented Liev Schreiber considers his options.

Liev Schreiber spent the bulk of his childhood in black and white. Growing up on Manhattan's Lower East Side with his mother-- whom he affectionately refers to as both a "crazy hippie" and a "painter-slash-political activist"--Schreiber lived his kindergarten days in a squatter building with no electricity or running water. Welfare checks covered essentials like food and double features at a neighborhood revival theater.

"The first movie I saw that wasn't black and white was Star Wars," said Schreiber. "You can imagine how pissed off I was." He laughs. "Everything you've seen is Marx Brothers, Basil Rathbone, Spencer Tracy, and suddenly . . . Star Wars. It was insane. I think that was the beginning of realizing that acting looked like fun."

Today, the thirty- one- year-old actor (whose name is pronounced Lee-ev) comes to us from a dizzying number of directions -- in the current Jakob the Liar, the Holocaust era drama with Alan Arkin and Robin Williams, next month on-stage as Hamlet at New York's Public Theater, and as Orson Welles in HBO's RKO 281, about the making of Citizen Kane. In December, he'll star alongside Denzel Washington in The Hurricane, Norman Jewison's tale of imprisoned boxer Hurricane Carter.

The setting at the moment is the garden of a Hollywood hotel, and Schreiber doesn't entirely blend. Sure, there's the tabled cell phone to ingratiate himself to the locals, but there's also a copy of The New Yorker under a pack of cigarettes, a dead giveaway that he is merely a visitor in this town.

In conversation, Schreiber is bright, engaging, and quite serious--an old fashioned actor's actor, in the theoretical, if not always literal, sense. How else to explain that in the summer of 1998, while he was home in New York performing Shakespeare in the Park (he won an Obie Award for his work in Cymbeline), Schreiber could also be caught onscreen in Scream 2?

"I've had a really funny career," he offers. Versatile, compelling, and eclectic also spring to mind: From the beginning, fresh out of Yale drama school, Schreiber has seemed most at home playing characters who are slightly off center (of Jakob the Liar star Arkin, one of his heroes, Schreiber says "I'd always watched him and thought, I could do this -- they let weird guys in"). There have also been studio movies (Sphere, Ransom), independents (Big Night, The Daytrippers, and recently, A Walk on the Moon), and theater. In fact, in the last five years, Schreiber has made twenty- six films and averaged two plays a year--not bad considering he also taught a Shakespeare seminar at the Public Theater and learned to scuba- and sky-dive.

But Schreiber confides that nonstop work recently helped dissolve a five year relationship. "I have to figure out a solution to this problem," he says. "I believe it has something to do with making a home and getting married. It really isn't that important, the work. I realize that now." Coming soon, then: a social life, all in living color.

Article transcribed by Angie

There’s Nothing like a Dane
Liev Schreiber Trades Hollywood for Hamlet

Liev Schreiber: You know his face, even if you can’t pronounce his name (which, by the way, is Lee-ev). On screen, he’s played a gallery of characters in indie land and Hollywood: the tie-wearing, talk-talk-talky Carl in The Daytrippers; a porn-obsessed, sensitive slacker in Walking and Talking; the did-he-or-didn’t-he Cotton in Scream and Scream 2; a brainy scientist in Michael Crichton's Sphere; a mensch of a tv repairman in A Walk on the Moon. In the coming-soon file, Schreiber has three movies at the Toronto Film Festival – Spring Forward, Lazarus and the Hurricane, and Jakob the Liar (a Robin Williams drama which hits theaters next week). He’ll star this winter as Orson Welles in HBO’s RKO 281. He recently finished a supporting role (Laertes) in the newest film version of Hamlet (opposite Ethan Hawke). But right now, the play’s the thing: In November, Schreiber will tackle the title role in Hamlet at the Public Theater, under the direction Andrei Serban.

"It’s sort of disappointing," he quips. "Now I won’t be able to sit in a coffee shop when I’m 75 and say, "I should have played the Dane.’" (Theater history buffs take note: Former Public Hamlet Diane Venora – who also played Ophelia to Kevin Kline’s Hamlet at the same theater – will be his Gertrude.) Schreiber, casual yet somehow serious in jeans and sneakers, strolls through the theater complex; he knows his way around here, having played Banquo in Alec Baldwin’s Macbeth, Sebastian in Patrick Stewart’s Tempest, and Iachimo in Serban’s Cymbeline – all Public/New York Shakespeare Festival productions. "Will you eat?" he asks, perusing a lunch menu before settling on a sensible blackened chicken salad. "I was playing Orson Welles, so I just ate like a horse. I loved it," he explains. "But I don’t see Hamlet as a very big guy." Over the next hour, the intense Schreiber lets loose on a variety of topics: how he does see Hamlet ("he’s going to look like me"), why stealing from your colleagues is a good thing ("Just steal from the best"); and why he’ll take silly over sexy any day.

Is Hamlet every actor’s dream?  
I never really thought of myself as Hamlet. It’s one of those things you just put out of your mind. "Oh, it’s not going to happen." Or someday, when you move to Peoria and you’re married and have kids, you’ll do it in the community theater even though you’re 52."

So you didn’t go to George Wolfe and say, "I want to play Hamlet."  
They wanted to have a meeting, so I started thinking about what I wanted to do. I was getting ready to talk about Leontes in The Winter’s Tale, which is a part I’ve always loved. I figured that was a big role, but not too big. And they said, ‘So Liev, we want to do Hamlet with you." "Er…[getting tongue-tied] Uh, excuse me, I have to go to the bathroom." I couldn’t believe my ears.

No hesitation?  
I thought about passing. [Laughs] It’s a little daunting. But I always feel safe, as long as it’s Shakespeare. It’s some of the most beautiful verse ever written, and if all else fails, don’t act. Just say it. Particularly this play: You can always rely on the fact that the audience loves this language and this character. It’s like the Christmas pageants in England; this play has become a real standard.

Have you seen a lot of Hamlets?  
Ever since I’ve known I was going to do it, I’ve tried to see every production I could.

A lot of actors don’t like to se other people’s interpretations.  
[Shaking his head] Actors are thieves. You’ve gotta steal.

Who have you stolen from?  
Everyone.

Paul Newman, your Twilight co-star?  
That’s kind of hard. You have to have physiognomy for that one.

Dustin Hoffman in Sphere?  
Oh, absolutely. I’ve ripped off Dustin like mad.

Alec Baldwin?  
I must have. I’ve ripped off every actor I’ve ever met. If you’re not ripping off one of them, you’re ripping off someone on the street. That’s how I learned acting. There’s a wealth of knowledge contained in every person – the way they move, talk, sound, dress, sit, eat. Everything is character. I was born overanalyzing people.

Hmm. Hamlet has a habit of doing that, too.  
It’s not an inherently dramatic play: A guy sits around for three hours and makes incredibly lucid observations on the state of things in the world. Not an incredible amount of plot. But I think that’s the trick to uncovering the play – finding a way to make what seems rhetorical active.

What’s your take on Hamlet?  
I’m at the stage where I’m just reading the play over and over. A journalist said to me, "It’s interesting that you’re playing Hamlet so young." At first I was flattered; I had thought I was old. One usually imagines Hamlet as a sort of a James Dean, tortured young guy. In the play, he is 30 years old. But the actors who play him are usually over 30.

Mel Gibson, Kenneth Branagh…
And that same journalist asked, “What do you think it will be like for audiences to see a Hamlet who they don’t know?”

Whoa!
[Laughing] Unfortunately, I keep seeing stars playing Hamlet, and it’s distracting. I don’t think Hamlet should be an acting exercise. Every time I see Hamlet where I don’t know the person, it’s very intriguing. It becomes a play again, as opposed to a showcase. But I like the idea that I’m not…

…hugely famous? Did you ever set out to become famous?
Yeah, but not for being an actor. When I was little, I wanted to be a famous world hero, this character who would beat all the aliens. I would represent the world, and I would win.

How do you feel about fame now?
In the beginning, that stuff sits heavy on you, because you know how connected it is to getting work. Exposure, press, all that. There are two full-time jobs that you can undertake: One is to be an actor; the other is to be a celebrity. They’re completely different. And if you’re doing one, chances are you’re endangering the other. There’s nothing wrong with being a celebrity; you can do a lot of positive things. But it’s a difficult road.

Who are some of the actors you admire?
I’m a huge Peter Sellars fan; always have been. There are phenomenal actors in the theater community: Frances Conroy, Harris Yulin…But there are celebrities I admire: Paul Newman’s a great celebrity. Great actor, too. He did it both ways. I’m sure if you asked him, he would admit to having to actively pursue that celebrity at one point. But I bet he’d also say there were times when he wished he could do work that was more intimate or anonymous.

So what kind of work do you want to do? What are you proud of?
The first play I did at Yale: my friend Chuck Everedd’s The Size of the World. I love doing Shakespeare; it’s probably my favorite. I love Brecht. His whole idea that an actor was present on three different levels – as an actor, as a character, and as a member of a sociopolitical community – is tremendous. Suddenly everything becomes much more gripping and funnier and sadder and deeper. The first time I heard that, I was like, “I’m allowed to be me. This isn’t just silly anymore.”

Do you think acting is silly?
Yeah, no matter how academically people want to analyze what I do, in my mind I’m being silly.

Speaking of silly, will you be in Scream 3?
They’d sue me if I tell you. [Smiling] I will be in Scream 3. If only to balance my Hamlet experience. That’s another one of those silly things: You find yourself on the floor, covered in blood, acting like you’re in hideous pain, with 15 crew guys looking down at you. Or standing in front of a giant blue screen, onto which they’re going to project some horrifying image that isn’t there yet, and you’re acting scared out of your wits. But I never had a problem looking silly. I have more of a problem addressing what’s attractive. I’ve had directors say, “Okay, make this sexy.” What if you tried and no one found you sexy? That would be devastating. As long as I’m a silly jackass, I’m safe.

But you play these sexy roles: Iachimo in Cymbeline; Marty in A Walk on the Moon.
What was sexy to me about Iachimo was his potential to love. And in A Walk on the Moon: Surprise, surprise – it’s very sexy, a man who loves his children, who loves his wife. It was a huge revelation that sexiness didn’t necessarily have to do with what I looked like or how I moved or how I spoke.

Yet so many articles I read about you talk about those things. They call you “ruggedly handsome”…
That was just one article.

No, there were more: “hunky”, “broad-shouldered”, “muscular.”
I’m glad you got the good ones.

There are bad ones?
Oh yeah. One of my favorites: Someone said I was “chewing on the scenery like peyote buttons” in A Walk on the Moon. [Laughing] I love that image.

You read your reviews?
I’ve never been affected by them. I know a lot of critics; I lived with a journalist for a long time. I’m lucky to have all these opportunities. And regardless of what anyone says, I’m still doing it. They can’t stop me. Well, I suppose they could. But I’ll worry about that when it happens.

Article transcribed by Angie

I’ve only realized this year what a luxury it is not to get overexposed,” says Liev Schreiber. Rather than practicing false humility, the actor is acknowledging how intense media attention can hobble a career. As an example, he cites Orson Welles, whom he portrays in HBO’s upcoming RKO 281, the story of the making of Citizen Kane. “When the movie was released’” he says, “no one saw it because William Randolph Hearst hated it. So the press killed it.” Schreiber has been drawing increased scrutiny as he rehearses Hamlet on Broadway and reprises his Scream role in December. And wary as he is of hype, he’s not about to turn down work. “I’ll take anything I can get.”

Article transcribed by Angie

TORONTO--It's simply impossible to escape the sought-after Jewish actor Liev Schreiber. At 31, the San Francisco-born, New York-raised actor is amazingly ubiquitous. Already, he's appeared in 26 mainstream and independent films, from "Sphere" to "A Walk on the Moon" to "Phantoms."

At present, you can catch him in movie theaters as Mischa, the amateur, love-minded, well-intentioned-but-not-quite-with-it boxer in "Jakob the Liar." The film, which takes place in a Polish ghetto in 1944, also stars Robin Williams, whose Jakob invents fantastical to bring hope to his fellow ghetto dwellers. (Please see JVibe review.)

Meanwhile, you'll next see Schreiber in November on HBO, when he takes on the role of the young Orson Welles in "RKO 281," about the making of "Citizen Kane."

Then, if you visit New York this winter, you'll find the Yale School of Drama grad spouting off "To be or not to be" in "Hamlet" at the celebrated Public Theatre. And "Hamlet" the film comes out in January.

Wait. There's more. Schreiber also appears this winter in Norman Jewison's "The Hurricane." And the actor - who achieved fame as Cotton Weary in "Scream" and "Scream 2" -- re-emerges in "Scream 3" this holiday season. Come early spring, you'll also find him in "Spring Forward."

GenerationJ caught up with the thoughtful, soulful Schreiber at the recent Toronto Film Festival, where he eloquently spoke about an array of subjects, including his feelings about Judaism, Jewish humor, the Holocaust, his Polish-born grandfather, his pseudo Bar Mitzvah, girls, flying, his love of acting, and his female fans.

GenerationJ: How did you get cast in "Jakob the Liar"? Did you campaign to get it?

LS: No. I was doing "Sphere" with Barry Levinson. We were shooting in Sonoma, near where Robin and Marsha Williams live, and they invited us over to their house for dinner. And one of the things we did was watch the Pernell Whitaker-Oscar de la Hoya fight. And I've always been kind of a fight fan. I was rattling on about boxing, and it turned out Marsha was looking for a Jewish boxer for a movie she was doing called "Jakob the Liar." And as Jewish boxers are rather few and far between, I found myself a role.

GenerationJ: Have you done much boxing?

LS: A little bit. Not very well. But then neither did [my character] Mischa.

GenerationJ: Has that ever happened to you before - that you got work because you went to a dinner party?

LS: That was the first time. It was kind of wonderful. I got back to the set of "Sphere" and Barry's saying, "Marsha really liked you." And I was thinking to myself, "That's kind of weird; she's married to Robin Williams." And then they called and said they're doing this movie "Jakob the Liar" and would I come in and read for the director Peter Kassovitz.

GenerationJ: I understand that Lodz - where the cast and crew lived during the shooting of "Jakob the Liar" - is not only the author Jurek Becker's birthplace, but that of your grandfather Alex.

LS: Yes, my grandfather's from Lodz. And there were 35 synagogues before the war in Lodz, and now there's only one. I think all 35 Orthodox Jews in Lodz were in it the evening that we were there. That was kind of shocking.

GenerationJ: Shooting "Jakob the Liar" seems to have brought you face to face with history.

LS: Yeah. I think my generation's relationship to history is, well, historical. One of the phenomenons of my generation is that last week is history and 25 years is ancient history. So, although I'm Jewish and Polish, I didn't ever have a very personal or intimate relationship to the Holocaust or World War II. But getting off the plane or getting out of the car in Piotrkow and walking through the streets and seeing those bullet-riddled buildings and whole neighborhoods that were devastated by bombing and structures that still haven't been rebuilt reminds you that this was just around the corner. I think for me, realizing how recent 40 or 50 years ago was very profound.

 GenerationJ: Working on this film also seems to have brought you closer to Judaism.

LS: It was very interesting learning where my family came from and learning about my relationship to Judaism. It never meant much to me before. I'd never felt very close to being Polish or Jewish. And I got off the plane in Poland, and I started to look around and I was like, "I kind of look like these people a little bit." [Laughs] Very strange. I thought, "Aaah..."

GenerationJ: Because you're of Polish descent, it must have been almost surreal for you to shoot in Poland.

LS: I had never been to Poland before, I was completely captivated and focused in
on what these people thought while we were making the movie. It was very odd. I thought it changed by generation. The very young people were very excited that we were making a movie there. And the middle-aged people couldn't have been less interested. It was so strange. We'd be shooting in a stairwell. Robin would be there, there'd be lights everywhere and four or five actors dressed like Nazis would be beating him into a wall or something and a couple would come down with their groceries [with a look] as if, "Excuse me." And we'd stop and let them go through. And then there were the older people who I think had a vivid picture in their mind of these events. And some of them had very compelling reactions to seeing the tanks there again, seeing the guys dressed in SS outfits and seeing all of these people walking around with yellow stars on their coats.

GenerationJ: This film made you really deal with the reality of the Holocaust.

LS: Yeah. Well, I had openly faced it many times. I'd identified with being Jewish. But I had never faced it personally, intimately and emotionally. It's the difference between seeing a dead body and seeing a dead body. I had never taken the Holocaust personally until I went to Poland. And, there I kind of felt the presence of my grandfather. I felt the presence of my uncles and aunts. And, I realized what had happened to them. I don't really yet know how to describe it. I don't really yet know how to talk about what's that like, to feel it. I think it's just a question of having a personal relationship to it, feeling implicated.

GenerationJ: Was it upsetting to do the role at times?

LS: Very. I got bronchial pneumonia. I think my whole body and mind were pretty rundown from being in that situation, being in that place.

GenerationJ: How long were you sick for?

LS: Almost the entire two-and-a-half months we were shooting. I couldn't shake it.

GenerationJ: Did you get better when it was over?

LS: Yeah. I came home, I got better right away.

GenerationJ: So maybe there was a psychosomatic element to your being sick?

LS: Certainly Peter [Kassovitz], the director, thinks there was. I would say that one could make a very good argument for it.

GenerationJ: Tell us more about your grandfather.

LS: He was a real mensch. He was sort of like my father. He sort of raised me. He was this guy who delivered meat to restaurants. He had this very, kind of, difficult, salt-of-the-earth job. At the same time he played the cello and he was a painter. He was a wonderful guy.

GenerationJ: What do you mean he sort of raised you?

LS: Because my mother left my father when I was five, and we moved to New York together. She was around, but my grandfather was also around. He helped us a lot when I was growing up. We didn't have a lot of money, and we were kind of struggling for a while.

GenerationJ: Did your grandfather impart Jewish values to you?

LS: Yeah, yeah. We would go to his house for the holidays. He would prepare Seders, and he would take me to ball games, and he would buy me clothes. He tried to teach me to play tennis. Not too successfully.

GenerationJ: How do you view "Jakob the Liar"?

LS: When I first heard about it, I didn't think about it as a Holocaust film. I read the Jurek Becker book first, because I didn't have the script yet. When I read it initially, I thought of it as a character film in the tradition of those Jewish writers who happened to have survived the Holocaust. The quality of the book that I loved was that the humor was distinctly Jewish. Bleak and yet full of that kind of resourceful human spirit.  "Jakob the Liar" is about a ghetto and a small community of people with very archetypal characters. There's a professor. There's a fighter [me]. There's a young woman. There's an old man. There's a bubbe. I was sort of surprised when people said that they were shocked that we were combining humor and tragedy, which is a great tradition of Jewish writers, and what the Eastern European Jews, at least in my experience, have brought with them to America. That kind of very, very dark humor is a survivor's mechanism. None of these stories, if they're any good, are about the Holocaust. Writers like Isaac Bashevis Singer and Joshua Sobel also write this way. To me, that's very indicative of Jewish literature, particularly post-Holocaust.

GenerationJ: So the humor in "Jakob the Liar" didn't startle you.

LS: Well, that's the way everything's s been done in my family. And I think in many Jewish families. To me, it is so distinctively Jewish to deal with these things with humor. To deal with the survivor's mentality.

GenerationJ: So your family members made a lot of jokes.

LS: Yeah, yeah. Very imaginative, very creative people. Very resourceful people. I think that's what came from. I think that's what the "Jakob the Liar" author Yurek Becker is expressing.

GenerationJ: Your family escaped before the war?

LS: Some of them, not all of them.

GenerationJ: Were any of them in concentration camps?

LS: Um-hm.

GenerationJ: They survived?

LS: I don't know much about it. My family doesn't really talk about it. My grandfather never really talked about it.

GenerationJ: Robin said that you and he were walking down the street and some anti-Semitic Pole saw you in costume and harassed you.

LS: Yeah. Some drunk guy went, "Jew, Jew." There's still a lot of anti-Semitism there. It's very complex, though, their anti-Semitism. It's very odd to me, being Jewish.

GenerationJ: Several times in the film your character Mischa took something that Jakob told you and added a twist, changing the truth. Or you made up things that Jakob allegedly said.

LS: Yeah. When we were hauling concrete, I told people, "Of course, he gets the BBC, he's listening to Winston Churchill all the time, all that stuff." Or when I said, "All of the dance music is really code language for the spies and freedom fighters."

GenerationJ: It was interesting the way you made things up.

LS: Oh, yeah, right. It's wonderful. That kind of very close-knit community dynamics. How gossip works and how rumors get started.

GenerationJ: Tell us about your love life.

LS: I was in a relationship for five years. And it actually also started to fall apart during "Jakob the Liar."

GenerationJ: What happened to her?

LS: I was just away too much. She's still in my life. She's still a very good friend.

GenerationJ: What about now?

LS: What I would give for a nice Jewish girl.

GenerationJ: Tell me about her qualities.

LS: Doesn't matter. Just as long as she's Jewish. I don't know. I don't believe you can control these things. Obviously, there are certain commonalities you share with people.

GenerationJ: There are rumors that you were gay.

LS: Oh, really? That people speculate, there's nothing you can do. I do have a lot of gay friends.

GenerationJ: You like both men and women?

LS: No, no. One of the great misfortunes of my life is how much I love women. It's terrible. I really don't think there is anything better than women. There really isn't.

GenerationJ: Why is it a misfortune?

LS: It's incredibly distracting. It's like you tend to get in these long, heavy, drawn-out, painful relationships.

GenerationJ: You're so well known; how do you meet somebody these days?

LS: Exactly. I don't know the answer to that.

GenerationJ: Any advice to people who want to go into movies?

LS: Be very honest with yourself about why you want to go into show business. I think there's a big difference between going into show business and being an actor, or being a writer, or being a director, or being a dancer, etc. You can't be duplicitous with yourself. You can't say, "What I really want is to explore these themes in my life" when what you really want is celebrity and money. If you want celebrity and money, that's fine. It's a very valid desire. Know what you want and pursue it.

GenerationJ: What did you want when you went into acting? You're well trained. Yale.

LS: Yeah, I love theatre. The first time I did a show in front of an audience, it was the first time I felt connected to people. I felt like it was the first time that people didn't think I was a weirdo. I felt like I was relating to people, and I felt like people were identifying with me. It was in college, a monologue show that I did.

GenerationJ: People thought you were weird before?

LS: No, it's that you're growing up - through adolescence and college, everyone feels a
little bit isolated or alienated from people. And I think that I felt, "They don't get me; I'm different somehow." And I think that all I really wanted was to be like the other kids.

GenerationJ: Did you have a Bar Mitzvah?

LS: No, I wasn't really Bar Mitzvahed. I was a Reform Jew. My mother is sort of an ecumenical person. She's a very spiritual person -- she lives on an ashram in Virginia. But we became friends with some Hassidic Jews, this guy named Aryeh Lasky. And when I was 15, my grandfather and I went out to see them in Brooklyn, and we had kind of a -- not a bar mitzvah -- but a party with me, my grandfather, and there were all these dancing Hassidic guys. We had a ball. It was really fun. This was at the Lubavitcher Rebbe Schnierson's place in Brooklyn.

GenerationJ: How did you meet Aryeh?

LS: I met Aryeh in the street, talking about Judaism. You know, the mitzvah tank. And he stopped me. I was about seven or eight.

GenerationJ: Do you know any Hebrew?

LS: Very, very little.

GenerationJ: So you didn't have much of a Jewish education? 

LS: No, not really.

GenerationJ: You knew you were Jewish. 

LS: Yes.

GenerationJ: Anything off-the-wall that you're into? Unusual interests?

LS: I've always had flight dreams since I was a baby. And the first thing that I did when I started to get work and make money was to try and fulfill my flight dreams. So I sky dive and scuba dive. That's kind of off the wall, I guess, but not really.

GenerationJ:You've certainly played so many different types of characters.

LS: I've had a wonderful career. I've done 26 films, you know. Twenty-six films, and people don't really know who I am. And I think that's why I've been able to do 26 films, because they don't know who I am. I like that and I don't want that to change.

GenerationJ: So what's your favorite movie you've been in?

LS: "A Walk On The Moon."

GenerationJ: Why?

LS: Because it's about fathers. And I think that's a subject that holds a lot of mystery and emotion and wonder for me. It's also about mothers and daughters and grandmothers.

GenerationJ: So you're back again in "Scream 3." Tell us about that.

 LS: What about it? Birds gotta fly, fish gotta swim.

GenerationJ: What happens to your character?

 LS: I can't tell you that. They'll sue me. They really will. It's a big deal.

GenerationJ: What was it like to play Orson Welles in "RKO 281"?

LS: Daunting. I'm a big Orson Welles fan, and I have a few friends who knew him and worked with him, and boy, I thought they're going to hate me. I play him as best I can. I avoided mimicking him. There are certain things that we share. Classical training. I have a fairly deep voice, and he has a pretty deep voice. He actually took voice lessons to make his voice deeper. He worked with a speech coach to make his voice deeper. Yeah. So I just tried to go with a character who fit all of the pieces of evidence I'd put together from the reading I'd done and the films that I'd seen of his.

GenerationJ: It must have been fascinating.

LS: This guy was one of the most famous men in America by the time he was 19. And where do you go from there? He was a very isolated person, a very lonely person.

GenerationJ: Could you describe your character in "Spring Forward"?

LS: I play a young man who, on the first day of spring, is starting his first day of work for the parks department. He just got out of a correctional facility in Danbury for an armed robbery of a Dunkin' Donuts. And he's trying to get his life back on track. Through his relationship with this older guy, and the progression of the year, and his relationship to nature, things start to change in his life.

GenerationJ: You're sure popular with GenX ladies. On one of your fan Websites, they flat out encourage "swooning and mooning" over you. One girl went crazy over a photo of you that showed your muscles.

LS: Oh, the muscles thing, I want to see that. [Reads printout provided.]

GenerationJ: You are all over the Web. I did a search for you on Alta Vista and found 1,652 websites.

LS: That's outstanding. I've gotta go on the Web.

GenerationJ: So what do you say to these female fans who are going ga-ga over you and your muscles?

LS: God bless them, every one of them. You know, I have seen some of those websites, and I've been on an on-line chat on one of them. I'm probably just saying this because they like me so much, but those girls are smart. And they're all really interesting people. I draw a cool crowd.

Connie Benesch is Entertainment Editor for GenerationJ.com, JVibe.com, JewishCulture.com and JewishFamily.com. She wishes to extend a special thanks to Columbia Pictures for making it possible for her to attend the "Jakob the Liar" press event at the Toronto Film Festival.

Back to Top

It's a dream cast: Ed Norton as Orson Welles, Jason Robards as William Randolph Hearst, Madonna as Marion Davies, Dustin Hoffman as Herman Mankiewicz and Meryl Streep and Bette Midler as Hedda Hopper and Louella Parsons. It's also the names that were bandied about (at least on the internet) when RKO 281 was first conceived as a feature film.

However, studio after studio passed on the project. In the end, HBO stepped up to the plate, and, on Nov.21, RKO 281 (the production number assigned to Citizen Kane by the studios) premieres, providing a look at the making of Welles' masterpiece that weaves fiction and fact.

A smaller screen and smaller budget doesn't allow for big "star" salaries, but that doesn't mean RKO 281 is lacking in talent. In addition to Schreiber (a consistently strong young actor), James Cromwell, Melanie Griffith, John Malkovich and Brenda Blethyn also star.

Last year, the American Film Institute chose Citizen Kane for the top position in its list of the 100 Best Films. This obviously important work would never have been seen if one man - Hearst - could have stopped it.

In 1940, a 24-year-old Welles came to Hollywood to direct with a reputation that would be hard for anyone to live up to. Hailed as a "Boy Wonder" for his career as an actor and director in New York, he was also famous for sending the country into a state of panic with the radio production of War of the Worlds.

Setting his sights high, he embarked on making a movie based on the intensely private publishing magnate Hearst. When Hearst discovered this, he became embroiled in a battle of wills with the young director, intent that the film will never be shown.

Those familiar with the way Welles guarded his privacy will be struck with the single-mindedness he went about in exposing Hearst's life.

"I think, to me, that is the excuse for the scandal, and the exposé, that he implicated himself," says Live Schreiber, who plays Welles. "In Hearst, he found a marriage of the minds. They were very, very similar characters, and I think it was a testament to who Orson was that he honed in so acutely on Hearst.

"He saw a lot of themes in his own life and his own upbringing that were similar - a kind of separation from his parents, a world of privilege and opportunity and how delusional that can make someone and how difficult that life is to lead

"In retrospect, having looked at Orson's life, it's kind of a wonderful confession of self that he viewed his own life so savagely."

Although HBO has had great success with biographical movies (such as the recent Introducing Dorothy Dandridge and last year's Gia), Schreiber was unsure about playing such a recognizable personage, and his performance is much more the essence of the man rather than a mere impersonation.

"I never really liked biopics, and particularly ones that used characters from contemporary history," he says, "only because I think audiences tend to go to films, or plays, or anything for that matter, to see themselves and to identify in some way. And what happens when you imitate a character, you're begging comparison, which kind of prevents the audience from identifying with the character and prevents the narrative from being anything other than a portrait.

"It wasn't an exercise I was eager to do because I know it is very difficult to keep, me at least, engaged in those kind of stories, particularly when the characters are as dynamic and contemporary as these. I almost don't want the retelling. I am satisfied with the memory. And I think the more distant the characters get from us and our contemporary consciousness, the better they are, the more interesting. 

"That's why I decided to read everything I could about Orson, try to gain some weight, try to figure out physically who he was and then forget everything that I had learned, trying to play the character as defined by the script."

In addition to studying Welles' work, the actor packed on 25 extra pounds to get inside the hedonistic artist.

"It was an excuse for me to eat as much as I could and do whatever I wanted," admits Schreiber. "But I also think the idea for me as an actor, of course, was to have a sense of what it felt like to indulge yourself like that. Carrying a bit more weight around and worrying about being healthy and trying to get work as a professional actor certainly weren't on the guy's agenda."

Schreiber also got to let other aspects of his personality have free reign.

"My stubbornness. My conviction about being right. These are things I share with Orson, which can have disastrous consequences and often do - for both of us.

"An allowance for theatricality, that life can be as broad as one wants it to be and you let it be, which is a remarkable and dangerous way to live your life. Just indulging in all that was a great experience."

Even though he ended his career overweight and appearing on Moonlighting and in wine commercials, the film legacy left by Welles is far more memorable.

"Many people consider that one of the tragedies of his life. He's one of the greatest filmmakers of all time, and he ends up sitting in a hotel trying to make eye contact with producers to get films made," say Schreiber. "But I don't know if that's so much the tragedy of Orson's life or the tragedy of Hollywood.

"I think Orson continued to make brilliant films, but the problem was that the medium he wanted to an artist in was extraordinarily expensive, so he couldn't make them on the scale of a Citizen Kane or any of his other bigger projects.

"In many ways, he was sort of the father of independent films. He made films fast, and he made films autonomously. He was able to retain the auteur's vision, which is kind of an independent film notion - to make an independent film outside the studio system - which was unheard of at that time. It was incredibly prophetic of what has happened in film over the past 10 years.

"He made a speech at the AFI when he received a lifetime achievement award and said, 'I am, and will continue to be, a corner grocery in a world of supermarkets.' 

"I just like that idea. To me, that's very much the American spirit - the spirit of the pioneer, the entrepreneur, the independent spirit."

Article transcribed by Angie

By Gia Kourlas

Although he's known for memorable performances in The Daytrippers, A Walk on the Moon and the Scream movies, Schreiber, 32, is actually a much-lauded, classically trained Shakespearean actor. After an unconventional childhood in which he was raised by his mother in a Lower East Side squat, he attended both Yale and the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts, and won an Obie in 1999 for his rendition of Iachimo in Cymbeline. (In February, during his run at the Public, movie audiences will be able to see him perform in another Hamlet -as Laertes in the Hollywood vehicle starring Ethan Hawke.)

Just before a ten-hour day of rehearsals for the Public's Hamlet , Schreiber relaxed in Joe's Pub, where he discussed his take on the great Dane and his other big role this month-Orson Welles in RKO 281, HBO's drama about the making of Citizen Kane. Schreiber insists his greatest strength in playing these two larger-than-life characters is his relatively low profile, but his legions of fans seem intent on changing that. For the actor's 31st birthday, they got him a star-not the tacky kind that clutter Hollywood Boulevard but an actual one in the sky. The online announcement of this unusual but generous gift is accompanied by a quote from Romeo and Juliet: "Take him and cut him out in little stars / And he will make the face of heaven so fine / That all the world will be in love with night / And pay no worship to the garish sun." The mere mention of the celestial present makes Schreiber blush, but it's somehow fitting: A real actor warrants a real star.

Time Out New York: How did you get the role of Hamlet ?

Liev Schreiber: At his birthday party last year, George Wolfe came up and said, "You know what? I think I want you to do Hamlet ." I was like, Uh... I'd had very good experiences working with George over the past six or seven years. He's a director whose work I love, so I was always very well-behaved in rehearsals. He proposed a bunch of directors to me, and I picked Andrei Serban, with whom I'd done Cymbeline.

TONY: Why did you pick him?

LS: Because he fucks with things so much-he constantly questions what theater is. And he challenges you to do things differently. Otherwise, he tells you that you're boring.

TONY: He really says that you're boring?

LS: He's right. I mean, someone could come in off street and say, "Boy, that was a really wonderful rendition of 'To be or not to be.' " But to Andrei, because he's been doing theater for so long, it is boring. He calls a play an incendiary device. He says that the act of theater is a kind of terrorism because audiences are so sophisticated. They're so prepared on the levels of humor, pathos and tragedy that you almost have to go [Throws up hands] Bam! So they'll drop all their defenses. When something happens onstage that makes you go, "What the fuck was that?" you're confused, and you go, Okay-very carefully now-just what am I hearing? And what I'm saying is [Quietly] "To be or not to be." Suddenly, they're listening to the speeches.

TONY: In New York, Hamlet has been a vehicle for a lot of big stars.

LS: Right. When I was cast, I thought, Wow-here's your big opportunity. And then it occurred to me that if this play is just a showcase for the actor, there's not an actor on the face of the planet who can sustain that kind of intrigue for more than three acts!

TONY: That said, how is Ethan Hawke as Hamlet in your estimation?

LS: I was totally shocked by Ethan. I've known him kind of casually, socially-a part of me always felt, Movie Star Guy. My bias and maybe my fear about film stardom probably made me go, Yeah, yeah, sure-he's Hamlet , whatever. Also, I was coming into it being the Shakespeare Guy, you know? Trained in England and done all the Shakespeares in New York-

TONY: And you're playing Laertes.

LS: [Smiles] I'm like, Yeah, great. It was a bizarre film, because there was no rehearsal. It was just get to the set, say the lines and go. But Ethan did a remarkable job for a guy who didn't have a tremendous Shakespeare background. He reacted impulsively to the text, he was on the verse, and he just let it go. I felt a lot of his work came out of a real desperation, which was totally appropriate! That he allowed his fear to surface-like, "Holy fuck, I'm playing Hamlet !"- is a real testament to his intelligence.

TONY: What about your other big role? Orson Welles was an idol of yours; how intimidating was it to actually play him?

LS: It was intimidating mostly because I have friends who knew him. Ultimately, I felt like, Hell, they're giving me the opportunity. It might as well be me-at least I care about him.

TONY: I kept thinking you were so much like Welles, but then I realized a lot of it was because you sound so much like him.

LS: Yeah, I think that's probably the way that I resemble him the most.

TONY: How did you capture his voice?

LS: Smoking a lot of cigarettes. And doing a lot of voice training. Welles did a lot of vocal training to make his voice deeper.

TONY: How much weight did you gain?

LS: Twenty-five pounds.

TONY: What did you eat?

LS: As much as I possibly could whenever I wanted to. [Laughs]

TONY: You've garnered all kinds of good reviews, but how do you perceive yourself? Are you extraordinarily talented, or is your success due to the fact that most of your competitors are ordinary actors but with good looks?

LS: [Laughs] I think my looks are a big factor. I think because I'm a little bit funny-looking, people credit me with maybe more talent than I have. If you're really good-looking, people are like, "Oh, he's just good-looking." But if you're a little bit funny-looking, people think, He must be really talented to overcome that look problem. And I've always approached acting as an audience member. People identify with the person who falls a little short.

TONY: Carl in The Daytrippers!

LS: Exactly. We're all essentially insecure, and that's what we're doing in life-we're trying to find out who we are. I tend to look for characters who have the odds stacked against them. I think people relate to them more than they do to the lead. The good-looking person is a different part of the fantasy. That's the person you want to fuck. You need that person there, because we all want that pleasure. We want to fuck him, we want to fuck her. But we don't want to be them. They're somehow not as complicated or as interesting as we are.

TONY: You have an extremely large fan base on the Web-is it because you pick characters with vulnerabilities?

LS: Probably. It's so flattering. I think we all have vulnerabilities, but the people who admit it are kind of special. I don't know that I'm willing to admit it. That's why I'm an actor. My personal life is a shambles.

TONY: It is?

LS: Well, no, but what I understand about relationships is so much deeper than what I can apply. People who understand and admit their vulnerabilities are so far ahead of me. I understand it-I just don't know that I'm ready to put it up on the block.

TONY: Is your girlfriend Kate Driver? Or don't you have a girlfriend right now?

LS: [Recoils] I don't, and she's not. We went to college together 15 years ago, and we're very dear friends. Some reporters saw us holding hands and printed that she was my girlfriend in the Daily News. What are you going to do?

TONY: Nothing.

LS: But yeah, she's my girl friend, you know. I don't like to talk about it, because it hurts other people's feelings, but to answer your question, I recently got out of a five-year relationship, and I'm kind of like, Okay, I've had enough of that for a while. But when you print something like, "he got out of a five-year relationship, and now he's saying, "Enough of that for a while' "-my ex-girlfriend, who I still care a lot about, reads that and goes, 'Ugh.' I don't want her to have to read that stuff. It's bad enough that she has to see me in magazines and hear me talk about our relationship with finality. It hurts her, so I tend not to do it. That's the context also with Kate. I was with my ex-girlfriend for five years, and then we broke up, and she went to France and met some French guy, and I was like, Oh fuck it, I'm getting out of New York for a while. I went to Los Angeles, and while I was there, I spent a lot of time with Kate, hanging out.

TONY: Your old friend.

LS: Yeah. I would have to go to these fancy things-I'd take her hand, and she would get photographed with me, and, yeah, in one sense, yeah, she was my girlfriend. But then you think, What is a girlfriend?

TONY: You're too much of a philosopher.

LS: Is it because we fooled around and stuff or is it because I'm going out with her? [Sarcastically] We're going steady? You know, right now, no, because it's difficult to do anything.

TONY: What's the worst thing you've ever done? Were you ever arrested?

LS: Yeah, when I was a little kid. And I didn't do anything really bad. Stole cars-everybody did that. I used to write graffiti. I haven't ever done anything real naughty-nothing that other kids didn't do. [Leans back and ticks them off] Did a little graffiti, stole cars, stole money. I was a little klepto for a while. I think everybody has a period like that.

TONY: Do the business people in Hollywood understand that you like to do plays?

LS: I think they get it; can they make any money off of it? Unfortunately, no. And that's what the business end of it is. There are intelligent people there, people who come from the theater. Does my doing a play further their careers? No. Whereas, when I do a movie, I can further a lot of people's careers. But how many times do you get invited to do Hamlet at the Public? [Mockingly] "No, no, go do that Disney picture." Come on-they know better than that.

TONY: Would you ever live in L.A.?

LS: I don't think so. And it's not because I don't like L.A-I'm just a New Yorker.

TONY: You've said you don't have many memories of your childhood. It goes beyond not wanting to talk about it, right?

LS: Yeah. I think if I could talk about it, I probably would. I have vivid smell memories, but unlike people who have time-connected memories, I don't... [Smiles] I remember one thing-there was no hot water or electricity, and we kept candles in bricks. The bricks had six holes. I remember pretending that I was a dentist by plucking the black pieces of wick out of the holes and then filling them with wax. I was doing cavities and fillings.

Hamlet previews November 23 and opens December 12 at the Public Theater.

Back to Top

::::::::::::::::::::::

:: Main :: Biography :: Filmography :: Stage :: Film & Stage Gallery :: Misc. Gallery :: Articles ::
:: Own It :: Links :: Interactive :: Forum :: E-Mail List :: Chat :: Contact Liev :: FAQ :: Miscellany ::

::::::::::::::::::::::

Since 1997. The original source for everything Liev. You'll always find it here.
A special thank you to Liev Schreiber for all he has contributed to this site.

© Copyright 1997-2007 The Liev Schreiber Site. All rights reserved.