Liev Schreiber Answers The Web's Most Searched Questions

I'm Liev Schreiber,

and this is the Wired Autocomplete Interview.

[suspenseful music begins]

[Liev screams]

Was that the point of that one?

Or did you wanna know if I was in Scream?

[suspenseful music continues]

Oh, here, here's what you asked.

How, oh.

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've 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's 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 liked that show, so I enjoyed being a part of it.

Those were all friends of mine who were in it

and they remain friends of mine.

And when you do something like that

for seven or eight years, those people become your family.

I mean, I'm used to it 'cause 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 a really long time if the show's successful.

I miss all of those people very much.

There's not a Ray Donovan group.

Okay, let's see what else you want to know.

You wanna know Liev Schreiber scream.

[Liev screams]

Was that the point of that one?

or did you wanna know if I was in Scream?

That's probably more like it.

Yeah, I was in Scream, I was in Scream 1,

Scream 2, and Scream 3.

I had met the producer, and as a favor

to whoever my agent was at that time,

he gave me this part in 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 is 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 an enforcer.

And, you know, there aren't many enforcers

who are great hockey players, so 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 dunno if you ever 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 a little blonde kid with hair down to 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 guys wanna 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 have one in my possession.

There's no comparison.

It's a just a completely different animal 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 500, 800 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 acknowledgement

where an audience sees something and they go.

[Liev chuckles]

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's happening.

And they walk out feeling, if it's good,

profoundly different.

Liev Schreiber talked too much about the theater.

Liev Schreiber Everything is Illuminated.

Yes, so I wasn't in that, I directed that

and I adapted it from Jonathan Saffron 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 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 Sabretooth, Victor Creed.

No, I'm also not Nicole Kidman,

if that isn't 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?

Okay, will Liev Schreiber return as Sabretooth?

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 Usyk?

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 Usyk.

What I love about Alexander Usyk 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 Usyk just smiles and is always kind

and is always respectful.

There's something about his work ethic.

The average boxer has 30, 40 amateur fights.

Usyk has 330 something.

He practices.

That idea that Kobe used to say,

I don't take a shot unless I've taken it

a thousand times in practice.

Usyk does that with boxing,

and it's a work ethic, it's a respect, it's an integrity.

The fact that he's also Ukrainian

and he is 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 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.

Liev Schreiber voice acting.

Yeah, I've done that a couple times.

I did Spider-Man movies.

I did My Little Pony, Isle of Dogs.

So yeah, I've done a little bit of voice acting.

Liev 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.

So 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 with Slavic fat pads.

Oh really?

There weren't any like, that's, come on,

people wanna know other more awful things.

I think like the number one thing is probably like,

does he have kids?

Is he married?

They wanna 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.

[ethereal chime swells]