Liev Schreiber

Isaac Liev Schreiber is an American actor, director, producer and screenwriter whose career has moved steadily between independent film, studio franchises, Shakespearean theatre, prestige television and documentary narration. Born in San Francisco on October 4, 1967, he trained at Hampshire College and the Yale School of Drama before becoming one of the more versatile American screen and stage actors of his generation. His early film work included roles in Mixed Nuts, Party Girl, The Daytrippers and Big Night, and he became widely recognizable as Cotton Weary in the first three Scream films.

Schreiber built his screen reputation through parts that often balanced physical presence with restraint and intelligence. During the late 1990s and 2000s he appeared in Ransom, The Hurricane, Hamlet, Kate & Leopold, The Sum of All Fears, The Manchurian Candidate, The Omen, The Painted Veil, Defiance and X-Men Origins: Wolverine. He made his feature directing debut with Everything Is Illuminated in 2005, adapting Jonathan Safran Foer’s novel into a road movie about memory, family history and inherited trauma. He later joined the ensemble of Spotlight, the Academy Award-winning newsroom drama, and worked with Wes Anderson on Isle of Dogs, The French Dispatch and Asteroid City.

On television, Schreiber is closely associated with Ray Donovan, the Showtime crime drama in which he played a Los Angeles fixer whose professional control contrasts with a turbulent family life. The role brought him multiple Emmy and Golden Globe nominations and continued with Ray Donovan: The Movie. He has also portrayed Orson Welles in RKO 281 and Otto Frank in A Small Light, showing a recurring interest in historically rooted characters.