From the Archives: Liev Schreiber
"I don't think it's ever good to do a movie like Armageddon for exposure. It's not necessarily the kind of exposure you want. For me, [acting] is a career, it's what I do for a living so I have to balance out what I need when. I find that I like to work a lot with independent filmmakers, I like to work with first-time directors. I don't get paid a lot for that, neither does anyone else. So I get to the point where I need to make money. If I can make one film that can support me for two or three years to do these other films, I'll do it." - Liev Schreiber
Liev Schreiber barely moves. When other actors meet the press, they're often fidgety -- fingering microphone cords, running their fingers through their hair, inspecting the table, or gesticulating wildly. Not Schreiber. It may have to do with his history as a yoga teacher or his avid participation in stage plays (he tries to fit in at least two a year; he'll be Hamlet in this year's Public Theater production in New York), where movement underlines emotions or conveys meaning. Whatever the reason, it is this physical serenity, this self-possessed stance that seduces.
The San Francisco-born, New York-raised thirty-one year old is one of independent cinema's most important players, having given memorable performances in films such as The Daytrippers, Walking and Talking, Big Night and Party Girl. He was one of the pioneers of the new wave of teen horror flicks by appearing as Cotton Weary in Wes Craven's Scream and Scream 2. Schreiber has also ventured into the mainstream, landing roles opposite Mel Gibson and Gary Sinise in Ron Howard's gripping Ransom and Paul Newman, Susan Sarandon and Gene Hackman in Robert Benton's wistful noir Twilight. His role in Barry Levinson's star-powered but disappointing film Sphere led costar Dustin Hoffman to cast him in a film he was producing called A Walk on the Moon.
In the film, Schreiber portrays Marty Kantrowitz, a husband betrayed by Diane Lane's Pearl who becomes conflicted about remaining with her solid but unexciting husband or running off with Viggo Mortensen's hippie travelling salesman. Schreiber's muscular six-two frame conveys heartbreaking vulnerability at the discovery and he delivers one of the best performances in a thoughtfully executed drama that boasts a bevy of lovely portrayals. The film, set in the Catskills during man's first walk on the moon and the explosion of free love, is a particular favorite for Schreiber who based Marty on his own grandfather, who died several years ago at 87.
"My grandfather was the mensch of mensches, just a terrific guy. He ran a meat delivery business. He'd wake up at five in the morning and he'd go down to the market and pick up brisquets and salamis and deliver them to the diners all over the city. At the same time, he was a cellist and a lover of classical music and fine arts and a very traditional man [who would] smack my hand if I ever tried to go in a door before a woman." His grandfather, who helped Schreiber's single mother to raise him, met and fell in love with a New York society woman who worked at the Museum of Modern Art. When she returned from a trip to Italy and confessed to an affair, Schreiber's grandfather immediately broke with her. "He never spoke to her again and it broke his heart. For the rest of his life, he was never the same." That heartache is expressed through Schreiber's performance as Marty.
Schreiber notes that Pearl's first step towards indiscretion may come off as implausible to certain viewers but points out that it's an act that requires a tremendous amount of character history to establish. "The thing with [Pearl's] character," he assesses, "is that you sort of lose something if you establish a wandering eye. That's the puzzle of how to build a character because you want to get her to that point but I don't think you want to overdevelop her as being loose or promiscuous, which I don't think she is. Something happens to her, there's like an explosion in her, physically and emotionally, that she needs to vent somehow. It's totally irrational, she's really throwing it all away."
Schreiber's responsibility, then, was to somehow have the audience connect back to his cuckolded character, and it couldn't be by trying to make Marty sexier "because Viggo's already cornered the market on animal magnetism and everything else he can get when he takes his clothes off -- which you can tell I have a real complex about," he cracks dryly. "In this [film], I was taking [my shirt] off more than I'd ever done in my life. I was trying to keep up." The way to the audience's understanding and empathy was through Marty and Pearl's children. Schreiber figured if Marty could connect to the children, then the audience could connect to him. "And if the audience did that," he concludes, "then [Pearl] would be able to connect back to him."
In A Walk on the Moon, a touching moment is shared between Marty and his daughter Alison (Anna Paquin), who has learned that she may been an unwelcome conception. Marty describes how she was conceived in the back seat of the car and how she was loved when she was born. It is a moment that moves because of the spare straightforwardness of Pamela Gray's script and the depths of subtle grace Schreiber achieves. "Children," he observes, "are incredibly dynamic and much more intellectually present than we often think they are because they look so funny. It tends to make people patronize or avoid being real with them. If I ever had a kid, I would give them that [and] that's what Marty doesn with her."
Schreiber is reaping the rewards of two years of non-stop work. This year features the release of Jakob the Liar, a Holocaust-themed drama starring Robin Williams as the one-time manager to Schreiber's boxer, Mischa. Then there's Michael Almereyda's contemporary take on Hamlet with Ethan Hawke as the titular brooder. Schreiber portrays Laertes. Schreiber produced and stars in Spring Forward, a film about two guys (one played by Schreiber, the other by Ned Beatty) who work in the parks department. All exteriors, the film was shot in real time and, because seasons were an integral part to the story, that meant shooting in the spring, halting producting, resuming in the summer and so on. Having just wrapped up Norman Jewison's Lazarus and the Hurricane, Schreiber is off to London to begin work on HBO's RKO 281, a film on the making of the cinematic classic Citizen Kane. Schreiber stars as the prodigious Orson Welles.
"Everything you do," he explains, "is an element of yourself, it's a branch of your personality. I've always been interested in the kinds of characters who represent what I think is a very large cross section of humanity -- people who identify with foibles and shortcomings more than they do with strengths."
