Schreiber was born Isaac Liev Schreiber in San Francisco, California, the son of Heather (née Milgram) and Tell Schreiber, a stage actor and director. His mother already had three sons when he was born. Schreiber's father, who is of Austrian, Swiss, Irish, and Scottish descent, was from a wealthy "WASP" society family from Bucks County, Pennsylvania; he graduated from Hampshire College and was a wrestling and football star. Schreiber's mother, who now lives on an ashram in Virginia, was born into a Brooklyn working-class household of Jewish Communists, descended from immigrants from Poland, Ukraine, and Germany. With a firm knowledge of classical music and Russian literature, she has been described by Schreiber as "this far-out Socialist Labor Party hippie bohemian freak who hung out with William Burroughs." When Heather was twelve, her own mother, Liev's grandmother, was lobotomized. His mother has said that she named him after her favorite Russian author, Leo Tolstoy, while his father has stated that Schreiber was named after the doctor who saved his mother's life. His family nickname, adopted when Schreiber was a baby, is "Huggy."
When Schreiber was one year old, his family moved to Canada. According to Tell, at the beginning of their marriage, in San Francisco, Heather had a bad experience on LSD. Over the next four years, she was repeatedly admitted to hospitals and underwent therapy. After Tell threatened to admit her to a mental institution, she left. As Tell pursued his wife, Liev and his mother were trailed by private detectives in various states; when he was three, his father kidnapped him from an upstate New York commune where Heather had decamped. By the time Liev was four, he was living with her on the fourth floor of a dilapidated walkup at First Avenue and First Street in New York City (his half brothers from her first marriage were with their father in a duplex on Central Park West), and he was the object of a fierce custody battle, which bankrupted his beloved maternal grandfather, Alex Milgram. (Milgram was the significant male in Schreiber's youth. He played the cello and owned Renoir etchings, and made his living by delivering meat to restaurants.) When Schreiber was five, his parents divorced; his mother won custody, and the two moved to a cold-water flat on the Lower East Side in Manhattan, New York City, where he was raised. They frequently had no electricity, hot water, or even beds.
When Schreiber was one year old, his family moved to Canada. According to Tell, at the beginning of their marriage, in San Francisco, Heather had a bad experience on LSD. Over the next four years, she was repeatedly admitted to hospitals and underwent therapy. After Tell threatened to admit her to a mental institution, she left. As Tell pursued his wife, Liev and his mother were trailed by private detectives in various states; when he was three, his father kidnapped him from an upstate New York commune where Heather had decamped. By the time Liev was four, he was living with her on the fourth floor of a dilapidated walkup at First Avenue and First Street in New York City (his half brothers from her first marriage were with their father in a duplex on Central Park West), and he was the object of a fierce custody battle, which bankrupted his beloved maternal grandfather, Alex Milgram. (Milgram was the significant male in Schreiber's youth. He played the cello and owned Renoir etchings, and made his living by delivering meat to restaurants.) When Schreiber was five, his parents divorced; his mother won custody, and the two moved to a cold-water flat on the Lower East Side in Manhattan, New York City, where he was raised. They frequently had no electricity, hot water, or even beds.
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