l
iev Shreiber ’85, a Tony-award winning actor and accomplished director and screenwriter, never thought of himself as much of an actor during his days at Friends. He said he had to be coaxed into trying out for plays and recalls Friends drama teacher Laura Eliasoph gently encouraging and somehow convincing him to try out for plays during his senior year. “I was nervous about the whole thing,” said Liev. After an ambivalent experience in the musical Spoon River Anthology, Liev played the clumsy character of Nick Bottom in the School’s production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream before graduation. It was in this role—in which his character is famously known for getting his head transformed into that of an ass—that he cast aside his reservations about the theatre and turned his nerves into vitality onstage. “I liked the energy that I got from the audience. I liked the terror that I felt being in front of people,” he remembers. Even in the classroom, Liev said he thrived on anxiety and volunteered to read poetry and prose aloud. “I was the kid who always raised his hand to read and embarrass himself.” Liev said his time at Friends allowed him to discover and nurture his unique capabilities. He remembers Friends as “the right place for someone like me who really had very few things I was good at other than this one very particular thing that I managed to find here.” He attributes this to the relationship of
Liev Shreiber '85 (center, standing) as Nick Bottom in the 1985 Friends production of A Midsummer Night's Dream. bottom Michelle Browne '85 preps Liev for a production of The Madwoman of Chaillot. top
I was the kid who always raised his hand to read and embarrass himself. trust and respect between faculty and students. Coming from a public school of 6,000 students, he was shocked to find that students were allowed to roam free without supervision, and even smoke in the designated “Smoker’s Alley.” “You felt like they were going to respect all aspects of your personality, whether they were socially acceptable or not,” he recalled. “They would deal with them if they weren't socially acceptable, but they were going to accept them.” Although he was new to acting, his affinity for Shakespeare started at a young age. A Midsummer Night’s Dream proved to be the perfect bridge between his budding passion for performance and his love of language. At his mother’s encouragement, he began reading Shakespeare at a young age—ten years old or so. Initially, he took a liking to the plays for their air of Renaissance magic, but as he kept reading, he began to discover the musical potentials in language. “Normally you would say that somebody was musical, but I wasn’t really musical. My mother tried to get me to play piano, she tried to get me to play violin and I didn’t have the discipline to stick to them,” he recalls.
Liev went on to pursue acting at Hampshire College, Yale School of Drama and the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art in London. After years of academic training, he started to get supporting roles in major motion pictures such as the Scream (1996) trilogy, The Hurricane (1999), Hamlet (2000), The Manchurian Candidate (2004) and The Omen (2006), with fellow Friends alumna actor Julia Stiles ’99. More recently, he has starred in The Painted Veil (2006), Love in the Time of Cholera (2007), Defiance (2008), and X-Men Origins: Wolverine (2009). He still loves the thrill of a live audience and continues to act on stage. He won a Tony for his role in Glengarry Glen Ross (2005), and was nominated for Talk Radio (2007) and A View for a Bridge (2010). He also directed Everything is Illuminated (2005), which he adapted from Jonathan Safran Foer’s novel of the same name. Despite his dizzying schedule set amid the chaotic, boisterous world of entertainment, Liev finds that his enduring connection to silence is a constant source of refuge and inspiration. Silence and stillness are essential to centering himself and figuring out his relationship to the character he is playing, along with his relationship to the audience.
s pr ing 20 1 2 | 1 8