AVC: How have you balanced performing in Glengarry with post-production on Everything Is Illuminated?
LS: Stupidest thing I ever did in my life. Being in the cutting room from 9 in the morning to 1, coming up to the theatre, doing the play, going back down to the cutting room until 7, coming back to the theatre, doing the play, sometimes going back to the cutting room, sometimes going home and working until 2 in the morning... It's been insane, and I'm looking forward to a long hibernation.
AVC: Ricky Roma is a high-energy character—how do you keep your energy level up?
LS: I think a certain amount of Ricky's rage and profanity has been a nice vent from the frustrations of the editing room, so it's great to come out screaming profanities at the audience for an hour and a half after eight hours of trying to be diplomatic in the editing room.
AVC: Have you ever gotten to the point in a play's run where you just wished it would close, or wished a successful show hadn't been extended, so you could rest?
LS: Absolutely. Every day. Every day. Every day until you walk onstage, and then you get an hour and a half reprieve while you perform. And then you're back again.
AVC: What's the most exhausting role you've taken?
LS: Physically, Henry V. Mentally, probably Hamlet.
AVC: Why particularly Hamlet?
LS: It was a hard production. I was struggling with doing a version of that play that belonged to the audience, doing a version that took advantage of the idea that everyone is Hamlet. I just wasn't getting there with it as much as I wanted to. It was also three hours and 15 minutes long eight times a week. And it was brutal. And every night, filling that up with the kind of focus and intensity that the part needs was exhausting.
AVC: You've said in the past that you don't like doing a lot of publicity work because overexposure hurts you as an actor. Is that accurate?
LS: It's not that I don't like doing press... 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. You get too well-known for being Joe Schmoe, and you're Joe Schmoe for the rest of your life. Part of what an actor has to do is be Joe Schmoe and everybody else at the same time. That's part of the problem with television; you play a character on television for a few years, and you're that character for the rest of your life. The celebrity mill is so active these days that actors can make careers out of being themselves, and I don't know that I want to. I think I'm just figuring out how to make a career out of not being myself. It's hard. I mean, I'm really much better with a script, that's what I do. I think anyone would feel awkward in a situation when you don't have one, I mean, you're being asked all these personal questions... I feel a lot better when someone's written the answers for me.
AVC: Do you have a problem with being overidentified as a celebrity? If people come to Glengarry Glen Ross to see Liev Schreiber the movie star rather than to see the play itself, does that threaten you as a stage actor?
LS: I don't feel threatened by that. No! Frankly, I think it's great. I don't think I would ever have had the opportunity to play Hamlet if I hadn't done films. Whatever brings them into the theatre, I don't care. By any means necessary.
AVC: Your fans seem to remember you most for your Scream character Cotton Weary, which seems odd, since it's such a small part.
LS: I really lucked out on that gig, I've gotta tell you.
AVC: What's it like returning to that character after years away from it?
LS: I think I was in those movies a total of seven or eight minutes in all three. And it was a treat. I was being employed, I was being paid well, working with a group of people I had forged a relationship with. It was a fun process. I never liked the genre very much, it scared the shit out of me, but it was a pretty inventive and fun way to do it. And we got along really well. And the success of the films didn't hurt, either.
AVC: Does your theatre work strongly inform your film work? Or vice versa?
LS: I think they both inform each other all the time. I think working on Illuminated was one of the best things for me as an actor. It put me so much in touch with what I loved about being an actor, and the idea of simplifying narrative in acting and writing and directing. I think people respond to truthful, simple narrative, and the more you try to dress it up to try and do something else, the harder it is for people to relate to.
- Comments