“I love my mother and father. The older I get, the more I value everything that they gave me.”
― Liev Schreiber
“Entitlement is lethal.”
― Liev Schreiber
“I think that everything I’ve ever done at some point is part of someone else’s legacy.”
― Liev Schreiber
“Theater is consistent. You ride your bike to work. You get most of the day off so you can see your kids. My problem is that after three months, I go mad. One of the reasons I never thought I could do a TV show is that I hate doing the same thing over and over again.”
― Liev Schreiber
“There’s nothing more exciting than that conversation you have with a live audience. It’s the best feeling in the world.”
― Liev Schreiber
“The best gig is the one you’ve got.”
― Liev Schreiber
“I had great teachers, great ensembles, and great companies to work with who supported my career.”
― Liev Schreiber
“You know, I have a deep, deep affinity for Dr. Seuss.”
― Liev Schreiber
“It’s finding time for each other. That’s the trick to any relationship, you know. Finding time to really be present for each other.”
― Liev Schreiber
“I was always drawn to tough girls. I liked that domineering thing.”
― Liev Schreiber
“I’ve got nothing against L.A. I think it is a really beautiful place. To be able to surf and get out in the Pacific Ocean every once in a while. The hiking, all of that is amazing. I love it there.”
― Liev Schreiber
“My publicist told me not to talk about politics but, yes, I think we have a president who stole the election.”
― Liev Schreiber
“If I’m doing my job as an actor, the audience knows everything I know about the character.”
― Liev Schreiber
“I get very nervous around famous people and I get nervous around beautiful women.”
― Liev Schreiber
“The funny thing is that I write and I act a lot about being Jewish, but I don’t really think about it as a regular person.”
― Liev Schreiber
“I’m someone who started in the theater and really couldn’t stand repeating the show. My favorite part of acting is the five or six weeks of rehearsal that you get. I like doing previews; I like the opening week because my friends and family come, and then after that, I don’t want to do it anymore.”
― Liev Schreiber
“It’s good to overexpose yourself with work. But don’t expose yourself too much with the press.”
― Liev Schreiber
“My grandfather was raising me, and in many respects, I was trying to understand what it meant to be a man. He was my role model.”
― Liev Schreiber
“There’s the private persona and the public persona and the two shall never meet.”
― Liev Schreiber
“You’d think true masculinity was just calm and collected happiness. So alpha male that it needs not or worries not. But typically masculine characters are always fighting, and most violence comes from some agitated level of fear and anxiety.”
― Liev Schreiber
“My mother didn’t let me see color films. I saw a lot of black-and-white films. The first time I saw Basil Rathbone, I was completely taken. To me, that was the epitome of great acting, was Basil Rathbone – not only in Sherlock Holmes, but the Sheriff of Nottingham, and all the terrible characters he had to play alongside Errol Flynn.”
― Liev Schreiber
“I manage to hide in my movies.”
― Liev Schreiber
“You can think about your career or you can think about your job. I like to think about my job.”
― Liev Schreiber
“As soon as you know what you’re doing, you’re doing it wrong.”
― Liev Schreiber
“Hamlet is a remarkably easy role. Physically it’s hard because it tends to be about three hours long and you’re talking the whole time. But it’s a simple role and it adapts itself very well, because the thing about Hamlet is, we all are Hamlet.”
― Liev Schreiber
“I really don’t think there is anybody in the business with better eyes than Elijah Wood.”
― Liev Schreiber
“Some actors need to be rattled and some need to be focused.”
― Liev Schreiber
“I didn’t think that a career in theater was very realistic so I thought the only thing I could make money doing and still be somewhat artistic was, god help me, advertising.”
― Liev Schreiber
“If you fall in love with somebody you’re working with, fine, but wait till your project is over.”
― Liev Schreiber
“I live with an 18-month-old Jack Russell named Chicken. He moved in about 15 months ago, and it was very hard at first because I work a lot and he doesn’t.”
― Liev Schreiber
“Style, no matter how outrageous it is, is still an expression of someone’s personality. And my personality is somewhere stuck in the classics.”
― Liev Schreiber
“I was a writer. I just wasn’t a very good one. I was lucky enough to have a playwriting teacher who told me that I’d be a better actor than I would a playwright.”
― Liev Schreiber
“Everyone assumes that novelists are smarter and more interesting. They’re generally smarter and more interesting, but they’re often very short. So it kind of cancels all the smart and interesting stuff out.”
― Liev Schreiber
“You should never ask actors about politics.”
― Liev Schreiber
“If you are going to remake a film, you may as well remake a classic.”
― Liev Schreiber
“I am so used to being able to express myself from being an actor. So when people don’t understand me, I’m just completely lost.”
― Liev Schreiber
“When you’re in a place like New York or D.C. you just can’t beat it, and it’s so hard to recreate because they are both such distinctive places.”
― Liev Schreiber
“A lot of times in Hollywood you’re as good as your last job.”
― Liev Schreiber
“I’m not that interested in working with impervious people.”
― Liev Schreiber
“Every girl I’ve gone out with has said something to me first.”
― Liev Schreiber
“I’m misrepresented as a scary person. I’m not. It’s all about my size and my eyebrows.”
― Liev Schreiber
“I’m drawn to people who share that sense of loss. All actors are trying to repair damaged relationships. I think that might be why I’ve been drawn to other actors.”
― Liev Schreiber
“I grew up in the Lower East Side of New York.”
― Liev Schreiber
“I actually loved Winnipeg. Everyone told me I was going to hate it, but it was great.”
― Liev Schreiber
“I think New York will always be this incredible international crossroads, and I don’t think that will ever change.”
― Liev Schreiber
“Actors, you know, they’re often awkward people in real life.”
― Liev Schreiber
“And I think for me there’s a lot of neurosis involved with where you should be or thinking about where you are all the time instead of being where you are.”
― Liev Schreiber
“As soon as you know what you’re doing, you’re doing it wrong. That’s what I find with acting. As soon as it becomes padded, it becomes pat.”
― Liev Schreiber
“That’s one of the benefits of working on big budget films. You work with people who have a lot of experience and you get to learn a lot.”
― Liev Schreiber
“Where else do you find great directors? Acting is one of the places.”
― Liev Schreiber
“I’m a typically lazy person. It is sort of characteristic of actors.”
― Liev Schreiber
“Film is such a bizarre vehicle for acting. It’s such a bizarre experience. I don’t think you ever really get familiar with it. If you do get familiar with it, you’re probably not that good anymore.”
― Liev Schreiber
“I am very good with dialects, but the two that I can’t do for some reason are the South African and Australian.”
― Liev Schreiber
“I’m actually a very bad surfer, which is good because everybody likes a bad surfer. Nobody likes a good surfer.”
― Liev Schreiber
“Don’t hit people; don’t let it get you too angry; remember that everything you do can and will be used against you. And take a breath and have some perspective.”
― Liev Schreiber
“You watch a hockey game, and the hand-eye coordination and the speed is really miraculous; how those guys track the puck alone, just following it with their eyes.”
― Liev Schreiber
“Part of what I enjoy about the theatre and acting is that sense of history.”
― Liev Schreiber
“You always have to create the character from the ground up.”
― Liev Schreiber
“Well, I don’t think I’ve ever been a huge target for the press, and I value that to a degree, because there’s a certain value for actors staying beneath the radar so they can play characters.”
― Liev Schreiber
“No, I grew up admiring people who played ice hockey.”
― Liev Schreiber
“The skill set for hockey is so specific to skating and if you haven’t been skating as a kid it’s impossible to play – and I wasn’t a skater.”
― Liev Schreiber
“I think it’s really, really important to mix it up as an actor, to try to get as much kind of varied experience as you can, not only for your own personal growth as an actor but for the audience to keep them guessing about what you’re going to do.”
― Liev Schreiber
“I get panic attacks in big crowds.”
― Liev Schreiber
“I’m kind of an obsessive-compulsive person, like, neat obsessive.”
― Liev Schreiber
“I love having that creative discussion where, at the end of the day, you both feel better for having done it. Maybe it’s a typically Jewish thing, where you sort of go at each other.”
― Liev Schreiber
“I was always curious about motivation and intention, and really, that’s a lot of what acting is.”
― Liev Schreiber
“And you know, I hate to admit this, but I don’t always think in terms of Shakespeare. When I eat, I do. When I’m at a restaurant, I’ll think, ‘Hmm, what would Macbeth have ordered?’”
― Liev Schreiber
“I find that the most interestingly written parts happen to be the bad guys.”
― Liev Schreiber
“I really never thought I was that good at film. And honestly still don’t. My strength is language. My background is monologues and a certain kind of Brechtian spin on theater.”
― Liev Schreiber
“My style was always intuitive. I never used to believe in working on your body. Anything that smacked of vanity to me was bad for your acting, but I learned that wasn’t true.”
― Liev Schreiber
“Everyone says villains are thankless parts, but those are really the best roles.”
― Liev Schreiber
“You hear different things from different people, and they’re all valid: they’re all valuable. I think that’s what comprises a performance is all those ideas.”
― Liev Schreiber
“During ‘Manchurian Candidate’ – that role originated with Laurence Harvey, and I studied everything he did. I would never be able to reproduce that performance, but I got a lot of ideas from watching it.”
― Liev Schreiber
“Home is New York.”
― Liev Schreiber
“I went to school in Massachusetts at Hampshire College.”
― Liev Schreiber
“I think conflicted characters are always more interesting.”
― Liev Schreiber
“I’ve never been a heavy practitioner of the method or, at least, with any specific intent; I’m kind of an impulse-based person. Like, I’m sort of waiting for something to happen that I’m not expecting, and I kind of want to jump on that train of emotion, whatever it is, both from myself or from the other actor.”
― Liev Schreiber
“I struggle with the idea of comparing people’s work and art. The notion of giving awards or putting a competitive spin on something that is a relative art form is sort of odd to me.”
― Liev Schreiber
“No offense to the Canadians, but I believe location is like a character, and authenticity really matters. When you’re in a place like New York or D.C., you just can’t beat it, and it’s so hard to recreate because they are both such distinctive places. I think it’s pretty easy these days to tell films that are shot in Toronto.”
― Liev Schreiber
“I’m terrible with big parties.”
― Liev Schreiber
“I was always curious about motivation and intention, and really, that’s a lot of what acting is. I was a little bit different.”
― Liev Schreiber
“I did some research into what was going on in terms of the sexual revolution that was happening in the ’60s in the gay community and particularly in the drag world. Before the ’60s, guys doing drag would dress like their mothers or iconic Hollywood actresses.”
― Liev Schreiber
“The guy who kind of broke the story in ‘Spotlight’ was a priest, the guy who had sort of done all the research. One of the things he said when one of the ‘Spotlight’ reporters asked him how he could still remain a Catholic, he said that, ‘My faith is in the eternal, and the church is an organization.’”
― Liev Schreiber
“We have to remember to respect the faith of people and maybe not the organizations or the groups that manifest around it.”
― Liev Schreiber
“The premise for me has always been that it’s vulnerable people who do violent things. And the more vulnerable they feel, often, the more violent they are. But I think, you know, that’s an idea that comes from history, from classical theater, for me.”
― Liev Schreiber
“That’s really how I got started was doing Shakespeare. When I got out of school, I was lucky enough to meet George Wolfe, who ran The Public Theater.”
― Liev Schreiber
“I think, the first time I played Iago at the Public Theater, I realized I had a – much to my chagrin – I realized I had an instinct for these conflicted characters, for these torn characters, for these characters who could be described as evil. I wouldn’t describe them that way.”
― Liev Schreiber
“The interesting thing about doing serial television is that the character is growing separate from you, the character and the show are growing, and you get to observe that and participate with it in a way that I think is actually really exciting for an actor.”
― Liev Schreiber
“I remember finding ‘Harold and Maude’ strangely erotic. I’ve always had an octogenarian fetish.”
― Liev Schreiber
“I find old women at weddings and funerals attractive; I have this weird mortality thing.”
― Liev Schreiber
“The worst bar fights I ever saw were in London. I saw a guy break a pint glass in another guy’s face in a club in the Eighties. It was a gay club, too.”
― Liev Schreiber
“When my grandpa was moved to physical action, you felt utter terror.”
― Liev Schreiber
“I have the kind of face that people want to punch.”
― Liev Schreiber
“I have Slavic fat pads that make me look like a chipmunk and arched predatory eyebrows. With that, you’re not going to get funny. That’s why I play so many bad guys.”
― Liev Schreiber
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