Liev Schreiber Interview, Defiance

Liev Schreiber’s repertoire of resonant, moving and oftentimes gritty performances has garnered the actor high praise in film, theatre and television. Schreiber’s upcoming projects only continue this path. In 2009, Schreiber will star in “X-Men Origins: Wolverine” as Victor Creed, the beastly nemesis of Wolverine, a role revisited by Hugh Jackman. In this prequel to the hit X-Men trilogy, Jackman’s Wolverine is keen on seeking revenge against Creed (who is secretly the mutant Sabretooth) for killing his love.

MoviesOnline sat down with Schreiber to talk about his new film, “Defiance,” an epic tale of family, honor, vengeance and salvation set during World War II. Shot on location in Vilnius, Lithuania, “Defiance” is directed by Ed Zwick from a screenplay by Zwick and Clay Frohman, based on Nechama Tec’s non-fiction book of the same name. Daniel Craig, Liev Schreiber and Jamie Bell star as the Bielski brothers who turn a primitive struggle to survive into something far more consequential – a way to avenge the deaths of their loved ones by saving thousands of others.

Schreiber, who plays Zus Bielski in “Defiance,” is both a Tony Award-winning theater actor and a versatile screen star and we really appreciated his time. Here’s what he had to tell us about his new movie:

MoviesOnline: Jamie (Bell) talked to us about why he thought this was a story that people don't necessarily know. Do you have any theories on why this is a story that just isn't well known? 

LIEV SCHREIBER: Yes, in researching the Holocaust for work that I had done in the past and for my own film, in trying to speak to survivors, looking at doc's and things like that, I found that there were very few people who were willing to talk to me, very few people who were actual survivors who had been in the thick of it, who had been at events that I was interested in knowing about. They just didn't want to talk about it and they wanted to know why I wanted to talk about it. They were suspicious of me.

Acting in a film was not a good enough reason to talk about it and as I researched the Bielskis themselves, I kind of started to see maybe the possibility of why they didn't want to talk about it. You know, I was really interested in the moral ambiguity of what they had done. To me, that's what makes them heroic. It's not the other stuff. It's the vulnerability. It's the cracks in the armor that equipped them to do what they did.

I'm not really supposed to tell you this, but I think it's so important. There's a story in Nechama Tec’s book about a neighbor who let his goat under the fence to graze in their pasture and the two brothers went over to the guy and beat him within an inch of his life. This is long before the Germans even came into Belarus. So you got a sense that these are guys who are already formidable and aggressive and violent people. Once they lose their parents, I think Zus is the extreme example, they go into a kind of -- it's not in the film, some of the stuff’s in the film -- there is a streak of violent acts that they do that are really quite horrible.

American GI's have a term called the Bielski enema, which is where you take a potato masher grenade and put it in the rectum of a German officer and watch the person explode from the inside out. Another thing that they did with people who collaborated with the local police is they would decapitate them and they would put their heads with signs in the town square and say “This is what happens to collaborators.” These are all documented facts about the Bielskis .

So, when I looked at that, I started to think these guys saw some things and did some things that they don't care to remember and they don't care for anyone else to discuss. And yes, you could have a dialectic about how heroic they are, but eventually you are going to come back to this thing that they have been having nightmares about for fifty years and I think that that's probably part of why the Bielskis didn't broadcast their story to the four winds.

MoviesOnline: Did they keep a pretty low profile once they came to the United States after they immigrated? Did they just have normal lives?

LIEV SCHREIBER: Almost less than normal. It was almost as if they were trying to blend in as easily as they could and as quickly as they could, in fact, hide. And I found that that was the case with most of the survivors that I had met or interviewed.

MoviesOnline: Did you hear the story before you started researching?

LIEV SCHREIBER: No I hadn't, so I was really surprised.

MoviesOnline: Did you get the same reaction with non-Bielski survivors? Is this a common phenomenon when you talk to concentration camp survivors that they don't want to talk about it?

LIEV SCHREIBER: Yup.

MoviesOnline: What are other reasons people have for not wanting to talk about it?

LIEV SCHREIBER: Well, the thing ultimately that I got interested in and started to write about for my own purposes was the guilt and shame. There's a terrific example in a documentary by Menachem Daum called “Hiding and Seeking” in which this guy goes to tell his uncle that he's going back to visit the Catholic Polish woman who hid his uncle and his father during the war and that was the only way that this family survived. The uncle is flipped out that he's going to Poland. He tells him don't go or he's going to get killed and that it's the most horrible place, and then when the guy says, "I'm going to go, but what do I tell the woman who saved your life?" He says, “Don't tell her anything. Tell her I'm dead.” You meet the woman and you find out “Oh those boys? They said they were going to send me money. Not even a postcard I get from them."

And you realize it’s very easy to cast that uncle as this horrible little Jewish guy who's trying to rip off the Polish woman who saved his life. But then, if you really think about it from an emotional perspective, that guy doesn't think he deserves to live and he hasn't been able to do whatever he wanted to do to reward that woman properly because he can't put a value on his own life. And what's he going to send her? A hundred bucks, five hundred bucks, a thousand dollars? In his own heart he feels like he'll never be able to repay her except by dying because that's what he thinks should've happened to him and that was what interested me about survivor guilt. 

MoviesOnline: You play the second oldest son, can you tell me who you spoke to about the character? I hear the grandchildren came on the set, what was that like for you?

LIEV SCHREIBER: I was very intimidated by it. It's hard enough when you're playing an historical character and then you have their son watching you play them. It was a real treat for me eventually to meet him, but I kind of hid most of the time when those set visits were going on.  

MoviesOnline: Can you talk about what it was like filming in Vilnius and how it was on set?

LIEV SCHREIBER: Well, it was cold. We were in the woods right outside of Vilnius which is give or take a hundred kilometers from where this actually happened. That's what I love about movies is that you get to go to these places. It's really remarkable. I also think that the cold and those woods were there before we got there and they're going to be there a long time after we leave and Partisans were in those woods, the Nazis were in those woods, there was a real sense of a continuum. For me, it was very inspiring as an actor and I think the cold also helps. The big things that I think are important as an actor rarely matter, it's the little things that kind of lend credibility to me. When someone's hands are too cold to hold a gun, oddly enough, those are the things that I find emotional. When someone’s shivering and he’s not acting it, those are the things that give me the immersion into the period and I forget that I'm watching so and so play such and such. 

MoviesOnline: Were there any special challenges of filming on location?

LIEV SCHREIBER: Yeah, it was freezing. We were all freezing and ironically with this kind of film any challenge is actually a benefit because you are getting closer to what ostensibly they went through. We couldn't get the trailers close enough that it made any sense to go warm up in between takes. You had a kind of quarter mile hike out of the woods to go to a trailer, so you didn't. You sat around in a group, you huddled and you drank tea and you told stories and you goofed off and that created at least for me a great sense of community. 

MoviesOnline: Given your background on stage and indie movies, do you like being an action guy?

Liev Schreiber: Yeah.

MoviesOnline: What’s the fun of having that machine gun and just going at it?

LIEV SCHREIBER: What's the fun? Ever play cops and robbers or cowboys and Indians? I hate if I'm blowing anyone's cover here. I don't think men really grow past 22 intellectually. Do you know what I mean? Physically we just get older and we are less capable of doing some of the things we want to do, but I don't think we ever stop wanting to do them.   

MoviesOnline: You're in the upcoming Wolverine movie, how much fun did you have being in that?

LIEV SCHREIBER: It was insanely fun. I felt very self-conscious initially because I knew the fans didn't like that idea of me playing Sabretooth. I think I am perceived as a kind of urbane New Yorker. I don't know, maybe I've done too many movies with Jewish characters or something [laughs] and they're like "It's like Woody Allen playing Sabretooth" and I'm like “No, actually it's not. I'm 6 foot 3. I'm bigger than Hugh Jackman. I can do this.”  

MoviesOnline: Can you take him?

LIEV SCHREIBER: I can take him. Yeah. [laughs] No, I really can. In fact, I do. But the reality is that Hugh since I've known him, I've known him a long time, has become this colossus of a man. He's like he's huge and muscles everywhere and I have to play this guy who whoops his ass. So, as soon as I finished “Defiance,” I began this kind of four-month training period, weight lifting, genocide of chickens phase of my life where I just got bigger and bigger and bigger. I mean, it was awful but amazing and fun. And then when I finally got there and I got to choreograph the fights with Hugh and get on the wire and do the work, it’s not that it was just fun, I saw some footage and it's pretty cool.

MoviesOnline: Speaking of choreographing fights, what was your fight scene like with Daniel because you guys nearly killed each other?

LIEV SCHREIBER: We loved it. I studied to be a fight choreographer and Daniel's also a theater actor and so, like I said, there is only a certain point past which boys go in terms of emotional and intellectual maturity. We both felt that the fight scene was really critical, that when brothers fight -- brothers fight all the time, but when it crosses a certain line, it's really, really awful -- and we wanted very much to come up with a great fight scene, because we both had some experience fighting, that also has some emotional impact to it, that had some narrative to it. It was really a treat working with him, because I think from the Bond stuff he's so facile and so athletic. Everyday we’d come back from work, from the freezing forest of Vilnius, and we'd start rehearsing the fight. "What are we gonna do?" "We could do this, do that." " I'm gonna punch you in the nuts." "Don't punch me in the nuts." [laughs]  

MoviesOnline: Was there a lot of rehearsal to establish the bond between the two brothers?

LIEV SCHREIBER: I think it was the in-between set ups, you know, the not going back to your trailer and staying out there, staying with the group, working together, talking things through, spending a lot of time learning the other guy’s dynamic.

MoviesOnline: Would you like to do that in future movies and not go to your trailer and just hang out with all the other actors?

LIEV SCHREIBER: The problem is everyone has to do it and that rarely happens. I was really shocked because this guy’s a major motion picture star and there's no reason why he should do that but that's his way of working.  

MoviesOnline: I want to follow up on the Wolverine movie. You are listed twice as Victor Creed and Sabretooth and I was wondering why that is?

LIEV SCHREIBER: [sinister laugh] What's that about? Victor Creed is Sabretooth.

MoviesOnline: So that's why it's listed twice?

LIEV SCHREIBER: I just wanted everybody to know I got a name. [Laughs]

MoviesOnline: Could you talk about how long you were filming that?

LIEV SCHREIBER: A long time.

MoviesOnline: What research did you do? Did you read the comics?

LIEV SCHREIBER: I read the comics before I got offered the part. I mean, I knew the character really well. Initially I’d been asked to play Striker and I asked "Is there any chance I might be able to play this Victor Creed guy?" The research that I did on it, Victor's particular mutant issue has nothing to do with his name Sabretooth, but that was the place I decided to start. Just what is a Sabretooth and how does that work? How do they move? What are their behavioral characteristics?

I knew this stuff from the comic, I knew that he was just a completely savage street fighter and that was his MO, but what I hadn't seen in some of the earlier films that I was curious to kind of pursue is what drives the guy and what are the kind of qualities. I guess for me it's the same thing with a character like Zus. It’s like rather than just say they're a violent brute, what's the cocktail that makes the brute tick? Hopefully people will like it.

MoviesOnline: What do you have coming up next?

LIEV SCHREIBER: Nothing. I'm getting ready for another baby. Any minute now.

MoviesOnline: Congratulations.

LIVE SCHREIBER: Thank you. That’s going to keep me on the bench for a while.

MoviesOnline: Are you looking to direct again?

LIEV SCHREIBER: Yeah. There's a couple things that I've been working on, trying to develop further. Right now, with the sheer volume of the acting stuff that I've done and the fact that I've got a kid coming, I just want to wait a little bit.

MoviesOnline: Are you a different actor since doing “Everything is Illuminated”? Did directing that movie change the way you act in this?

LIEV SCHREIBER: Yes, it did. “Everything is Illuminated” was for me a wonderful experience, but at the same time it cost me a tremendous amount to make that film in a lot of different ways -- emotionally, psychologically, physically, career, a lot of things -- that I was happy to pay, but I think that it gave me a... I felt a deep sense of responsibility towards my own family, towards Jonathan (Safran Foer), the writer of the book, towards the audience, and it was very overwhelming because I had taken things kind of lightly as an actor, that you could move through a career as an actor without ever really engaging in what you are doing.

When you direct a film, you write a film, you are responsible for the film. People can say “I like your performance” or “I didn't like your performance,” but at the end of the day, when you direct a film, they’re going “What the hell were you thinking?” and "Who are you and why did you do that?" The buck stops there. I guess the truth is that, that can cripple you or you can accept that as one of the great benefits of being an artist, that you can be responsible for your work and not have it be devastating.

For instance, people say “Why are you doing all these action movies?” and I say “It's because I find them thrilling! They're fun!” I completely support and promote that endeavor of going to the movies. It should be fun. But I think after “Illuminated” there was a sense for me of getting older and also of going, well you know, you do have to be responsible for your work and you do have to be able to engage with what you're doing and yet not have it cripple you.

“Defiance” opens in theaters on December 31st.