Liev Schreiber — biography, films, roles and trivia

Biography

Isaac Liev Schreiber (/ˈliːɛv ˈʃraɪbər/ LEE-ev SHRY-bər; born October 4, 1967) is an American actor. He has received numerous accolades, including a Tony Award and nominations for nine Primetime Emmy Awards and five Golden Globe Awards.

Schreiber's early film roles include Mixed Nuts (1994), Party Girl (1995), The Daytrippers (1996), and Big Night (1996). He appeared in the first three Scream horror films (1996–2000), Ransom (1996), The Hurricane (1999), Hamlet (2000), Kate & Leopold (2001), The Manchurian Candidate (2004), The Painted Veil (2006), X-Men Origins: Wolverine (2009), Pawn Sacrifice (2014), and Spotlight (2015). He acted in the Wes Anderson films Isle of Dogs (2018), The French Dispatch (2021), and Asteroid City (2023). He made his directorial film debut with Everything Is Illuminated (2005).

He made his Broadway debut in In the Summer House (1992). He earned the Tony Award for Best Featured Actor in a Play for playing Richard Roma in the David Mamet play Glengarry Glen Ross (2005). He was Tony-nominated for his roles in the Eric Bogosian play Talk Radio (2007), the Arthur Miller revival A View from the Bridge (2010) and the John Patrick Shanley revival Doubt (2024). He also acted in Les Liaisons Dangereuses (2016).

For his television roles, he most notably portrayed the titular character in the Showtime drama series Ray Donovan (2013–2020). He reprised the role in the television film Ray Donovan: The Movie (2022). The role has earned him nominations for three Primetime Emmy Awards and four Golden Globe Awards. He also portrayed Orson Welles in the HBO film RKO 281 (1999) and Otto Frank in the Nat Geo miniseries A Small Light (2023).

Filmography

2

2021 King Richard Paul Cohen

2016 Chuck Chuck Wepner

Interesting facts

8

1
Full name is Isaac Liev Schreiber.
2
In 1992 he graduated from the Yale School of Drama. He also attended the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art in London. Initially Schreiber intended to become a screenwriter and writer.
3
When Schreiber was one year old, the family moved to Canada, and when he was four, his parents divorced. His childhood was spent in the Lower East Side of New York, where Liev lived with his mother after his parents' divorce.
4
Schreiber was named after his mother's favorite writer, Leo Tolstoy.
5
Liev has two sons from his common-law marriage with Naomi Watts. The elder is named Alexander Pitt (born July 26, 2007), and the younger is Samuel Kai (born December 13, 2008).
6
His father has mixed Australian, Irish, Swiss, and Scottish roots, while his mother is Jewish, with ancestors who immigrated from Poland, Ukraine, and Germany (his maternal grandfather is from Ukraine).
7
Born into a family of artist Heather Milgrom and theater actor and director Tell Schreiber.
8
Brother of Pablo Schreiber.