Liev Schreiber was in East Hampton to receive the Hamptons International Film Festival’s Dick Cavett Artistic Champion Award on Saturday and to discuss his life and career with Alec Baldwin before a packed house at the middle school.
When presenting the award at the conclusion of the program, Mr. Baldwin said, “On behalf of the film festival, for work this gentleman has done in film, on television, in theater, and his work in terms of advocacy, I want to present this award to one of the five greatest actors of his generation, Liev Schreiber.”
The key word there is advocacy, because the film clips of the actor’s career that preceded his entrance drew heavily upon his involvement with Blue Check Ukraine, an organization he co-founded with six others in response to the Russian invasion.
Mr. Schreiber’s career includes a slew of Emmy, Golden Globe, and Critics Choice nominations for his long-running series “Ray Donovan,” Tony and Drama Desk outstanding actor awards for David Mamet’s play “Glengarry Glen Ross,” and a Screen Actors Guild award he shared with his fellow cast members for the film “Spotlight,” directed by Tom McCarthy. Most recently, he starred with Nicole Kidman in the Netflix drama “The Perfect Couple.”
Of that series, he said, “I was really nervous about it because I played such a cad. I think the format, the cast, the director, and the timing worked perfectly. There was an appetite for it, and it hit hard. I give most of the credit to Susanne Bier, a Danish director, and Nicole Kidman, who has made that format and that style so successful. And she’s got a lot more moves as an actor than I think anybody really knew, certainly than I knew.”
Asked by Mr. Baldwin about his early exposure to media, Mr. Schreiber said his mother, a colorful person, took him to an art house theater in the East Village, where “there weren’t any color films allowed.”
But he was also exposed to Chaplin, and, especially important for him, Shakespeare. He drew a round of laughter when he deadpanned that Olivier “was really good,” and mentioned Basil Rathbone, and girls, as two other things he thought were cool.
He cited the circus as another element that led him to acting. His grandfather took him to Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey and bought him a plastic sword. “I’m not kidding, I think it was the circus and the plastic swords.” His mother worked, and he didn’t start school until he was 6 or 7, so “there was a lot of daydreaming. I think that’s really where it started. But the idea of being in a film or on a television show — no way.”
The first live theater he saw was a George Bernard Shaw play, but his sharpest early memory was seeing Raul Julia doing “Othello” in Shakespeare in the Park.
“The Delacorte Theater was magic, especially in those days. There was a crane in the back and they lit the castle, and I remember when Raul did that scene where he kills Desdemona, one of the things that happens is right at the moment after she dies you see that crane take off in the background.”
Mr. Schreiber recalled that more than 20 years later he was onstage at the Delacorte, playing the lead in “Macbeth.” In the middle of a scene, “there’s a spotlight on me, it’s going really well, and all of a sudden this racoon, who really looks drunk, walks right up in front of me, stops, and stands there looking at me. The entire audience can see it, because he’s on the periphery of the spotlight.” It walked off before the scene ended.
In a review of that 2006 production, Christopher Isherwood of The New York Times called Mr. Schreiber “the foremost Shakespearean actor of his generation in America.”
When asked how he prepares for a film or play, Mr. Schreiber mentioned an experience he had as a student at the Yale School of Drama. It was Lloyd Richards’s last year as dean, and “as we walked in, thinking we were the most special people on the face of the earth because it was so hard to get into the school, he said, ‘The first thing I want to say is to remind you all that actors are the instruments of playwrights.’ ”
“For the most part, that’s been my directive, find the thing that’s worth expressing in the piece, and do it. Find why this is an important piece and find what your role is in it.” One of the ways he approaches a part is to see how everybody else did the role. “There’s no way I can do it like anybody else, but I want to be informed by that continuum of information and more importantly by the continuum of that play: Why are we doing that play now? What does it mean?”
Speaking of the theater, Mr. Baldwin compared a play to a black-diamond ski slope. “I know I’m going to fall during the performance, I’m never going to go all the way down the hill and make it, ever.” When, during a rehearsal for “Equus,” he expressed that feeling to Peter Shaffer, the author of the play said, “I hope you find it thrilling on the way down.”
Mr. Schreiber noted that he went through a period of his career in the theater where he received rave reviews. “I think as an actor every time the illusion about what I thought I was doing was ruptured in some fantastic way, and I was exposed, I got so much better. The ones I was good in I always felt, like okay, good, great. But I didn’t grow as much as when people were like, ‘boy did you stink up the room.’ “
He was drawn to the character of Ray Donovan, created by Ann Biderman, because “he was a figment of a woman’s imagination in an extraordinary way. And I just thought it was really interesting to do that because ironically it comes out as this uber-masculine thing. I thought it was great writing and all I really had to do was do less.”
He never dreamt he would play a lead. “I was a character actor, a supporting actor. Now I’m the star of the show, how do you do that? I became deeply reliant on my fellow cast mates, and I got really involved in wanting to cast those parts with people I trusted.”
When asked about his next movie, Darren Aronofsky’s “Caught Stealing,” Mr. Schreiber said he wanted to explain his mustache. “I play a Hasidic hit man, and I’ve learned that if you’re going to do a show, a mustache and soul patch will come off when you talk. They can make a fake beard but they can’t do this,” he said, pointing to his mustache.
Mr. Baldwin began the conversation by asking about the genesis of Mr. Schreiber’s involvement with Ukraine. Because in 2005 he had directed “Everything Is Illuminated,” a comedy/adventure set in that country, people in Hollywood knew he had Ukrainian grandparents and great-grandparents. When asked after the invasion what they should do, “I was embarrassed that I didn’t know.”
With “Ray Donovan” behind him, he was spending more time with his kids. “We were watching this war unfold and I thought, what do I know about Ukraine, what can I tell my kids? I didn’t have anything.” When a friend suggested he do a man-on-the-street internet program interviewing Ukrainians and getting their stories out there, he told his friend, “If you want to help, give some money.”
Not long after, Jason Cone, the former director of Doctors Without Borders, called to ask Mr. Schreiber if he was serious about giving money. “My first thought was, oh shit, they got me. But I said I was serious, and I thought here’s a chance to do something that might have some meaning for my kids.”
Blue Check Ukraine was founded in 2022 in the wake of Russia’s invasion. “Because we’ve got no overhead — because I’ve got a day job — we get 90 cents on the dollar, if not better. The thing for us is changing the aid system, the way it works. What we’re trying to do is push for that local aid, local N.G.O.s, that’s what Blue Check is.”
