I'm Liev Schreiber and this is the Wired Autocomplete interview
. Was that the point of that one or,
or did you wanna know if I was in screen
? Oh, here, here's, here's what you
asked how OK, how to pronounce Liev Schreiber.
That's how you pronounce it. Liev Schreiber. I
don't remember the last time I've heard my name said
correctly. That might have been at my mom's house
. Liev Schreiber is a Jets fan. Liev Schreiber
is a Jets fan. Sadly, Liev Schreiber is
also a Giants fan. Liev Schreiber is a fan
of pretty much every team that has ever done a
hard knocks show because you get to know these guys
who are at this inflection point in their careers and
it's moving and you start to follow them and you
start to care about them. I think that's why
the show is good. And I think that's why
I'm a fan of so many NFL teams. Liev
Schreiber Awards just too many to list here. Liev
Schreiber, Ray Donovan, I really like that show
. So I, I enjoyed being a part of
it. Those were all friends of mine who were
in it and they remain friends of mine and,
you know, when you do something like that for
seven or eight years, those people become your family
. I mean, I'm used to it because I
was a theater actor. So you had this thing
where you work for three months, get very close
with people and then you leave and I didn't realize
that was one of the things about television is that
you work with people for really long time. If
the show is successful, I miss all of those
people very much. There is not a Donovan group
. OK. Let's see. What else you wanna
know? You wanna know we have Schreiber Scream.
Was that the point of that one? Or,
or did you wanna know if I was in scream
? It's probably more like it. Yeah, I
was in Scream, I was in Scream one,
scream two and Scream three. I had met the
producer and as a favor to whoever my agent was
at that time, he gave me this part.
It all I had to do was walk up and
down some stairs and they would give me$20,000.
And at that point, I was like, oh
yeah. And so I did. And then next
thing I know it's like this zeitgeist hit and I'm
in the second one and I'm in the third one
. So I actually owe Scream a lot for my
career. Does Liev Schreiber play hockey very badly.
I learned to play hockey for goon because I had
to play, uh, an enforcer and, uh
, you know, there aren't many enforcers who are
great hockey players. So it, it kind of
made sense that I wasn't a great hockey player,
but I had to look like I knew how to
skate. So they sent me to hockey camp for
five weeks, which is one of the amazing things
about being in the movies is you get to learn
things. Liev Schreiber, Asteroid City. Yes,
I was in Asteroid City. Being on a Wes
Anderson set is like, I don't know if you
ever saw, saw the show Captain Kangaroo. It's
like that youtube. It Liev Schreiber as a kid
, I grew up in the lower east side of
New York. I was uh a little blonde kid
with hair down on my butt and I wore,
for some reason, all the kids in my neighborhood
called me boots because I wore cowboy boots that were
like three sizes too big. So hopefully that encapsulates
my childhood. What else do you don't? Do
you guys want to know Liev Schreiber? Broadway?
Yes, I've been on Broadway a number of times
. I've even got a Tony actually. I mean
, I don't have it here with me but I
, I have, I have one in my possession
. There's no comparison. It's just a completely different
animal. Um, and I love it. It's
hard. The schedules are hard. You get paid
a lot less although Broadway can sometimes be a little
more lucrative. There's something about the theater and this
sounds really corny, but it's my equivalent of church
. It's about the audience, it's about the community
. It's about 508 100 people in the dark communing
and it has much less to do with the actors
than you think. There are laughs in the theater
that don't exist in real life. There are laughs
of acknowledgment where an audience sees something and they go
and that laugh is meant to communicate to the other
people in the room that they share something with this
story or this idea and this theme because what you're
doing on stage is really putting something up for them
to become closer to each other, for them to
become closer to themselves, which I suppose cinema does
the same thing. But what I love about the
theater is it, does it in this very visceral
real way that like they're sitting next to each other
doing it and it, and it's happening and they
walk out feeling if it's good, profoundly different.
Liev Schreiber talked too much about the theater. S
everything is limited. Yes. So I wasn't in
that. I directed that. And II, I
uh I adapted it from Jonathan Stafford Ford's book.
It was the beginning for me of my fascination with
America as a nation of grandchildren. It's part of
why I'm so interested in the war in Ukraine and
, and part of why I started blue check and
part of why I think we have to be so
vigilant about our democracy that it's something that we do
owe a debt to our grandparents for and it's something
that we do have to. Unfortunately, every once
in a while, perform some maintenance on no liev
Schreiber is not Wolverine, but I was in a
movie with Wolverine and I played his brother who was
Saber Tooth. Victor Creed. Uh No, I'm
also not Nicole Kidman if that isn't uh blatantly obvious
to all of you. But I was finally in
a show with Nicole Kidman called The Perfect Couple,
which was really, really fun and she is a
remarkable actress and surprisingly naughty and I really enjoyed acting
with her. What else? OK. Will Liev
Schreiber return his Saber tooth. It's possible. I
mean, that was a lot of weightlifting and eating
chicken and I'm not sure I'm up to that.
But if someone had a great idea, I'd be
in there. Why was Liev Schreiber with Usi?
Because he's probably the person I admire most in the
world right now. I'm a huge boxing fan,
but it's not what I love about Alexander. Usi
. What I love about Alexander is his principles and
his values and who he is as a person.
And you know, fighters always talk shit about each
other before fights and Usi just smiles and is always
kind and is always respectful. There's something about his
work ethic, the average boxer has, you know
, 3040 amateur fights. USI has 330 something.
He practices that idea that Kobe used to say I
don't take a shot unless I've taken it 1000 times
in practice. Does that with boxing. And it's
a, it's a, it's a work ethic.
It's a respect, it's an integrity, the fact
that he's also Ukrainian and he's representing the strength and
resilience of his people and not just his people,
but all of us, what we're capable of if
we put our minds to it, he's extremely special
to me. So, when he invited me to
do the ring walk with him, I was very
, um, I was very flattered and extremely nervous
. I was so freaked out that I was gonna
jinx him, but thankfully he is who he is
and he won. He's the heavyweight champion of the
world, by the way, we have Schreiber voice
acting. Yeah, I've done that a couple of
times. I, the Spiderman movies. I did
, uh, uh, my little Pony Isle of
dogs. So, yeah, I've done a little
bit of voice acting. The Schreiber beard. Yeah
, I have a beard. I mean, I
wouldn't call it a beard. I'd call it stubble
like it started with Ray Donovan. And then as
I got older, I was like, you know
, my face is pretty fat that we call it
Slavic fat pads in my family. And I thought
with the stubble, my face looks a little less
fat stubble helps guys out there. What are they
called? When guys do that? They give,
like, grooming tips. Stubble helps and Slavic fat
pads. Oh, really? There weren't any,
like, that's come on, people want to know
other, more awful things I think. Like,
the number one thing is probably like, does he
have kids? Is he married? They want to
know all that stuff? I'm kind of disappointed.
I have three. I'm not convinced that those are
the top questions the internet has about me. I
think that the internet has a lot more awful questions
about me that you're protecting me from. Somebody's protecting
me from the awful questions that the internet has about
me. But you know what? You can always
just Google me.