While he was growing up, his mother would not let him watch color films. The first color film he saw was Star Wars: Episode IV - A New Hope (1977) in 1977.
He was the fans' favorite for the role of District Attorney Harvey Dent in The Dark Knight (2008) and stated that he was interested in the part. In the end, he lost the role to Aaron Eckhart.
He became a father for the second time at the age of 41 when his former fiancée Naomi Watts gave birth to their child Kai Schreiber on December 14, 2008.
He grew up in the Lower East Side neighborhood of New York City. He graduated from Friends Seminary High School in Manhattan.
His mother says she named him after her favorite writer, Lev Tolstoy; Tolstoy's Russian name is Lev (in Russian the letter 'e' is pronounced 'ye', and the standard English rendering of the name is Lev). His father, however, says he was named after a doctor who saved his mother's life in San Francisco. In German, the word 'schreiber' means 'writer'.
He became a father for the first time at the age of 39 when his former fiancée Naomi Watts gave birth to their son Alexander Pete Schreiber (Sasha Schreiber) on July 25, 2007.
He is the son of Tell Schreiber and Heather Schreiber. He has four stepbrothers and one stepsister; one of them is his younger half-brother Pablo Schreiber.
He attended the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art in London and Hampshire College, and graduated from the Yale School of Drama with a master's degree in 1992.
He accompanied his girlfriend Naomi Watts to the New York premiere of King Kong (2005). It was their first public appearance together. On February 28, 2007, they announced they were expecting their first child.
The role for which he won his first Tony Award (Richard Roma in Glengarry Glen Ross) had also earned Joe Mantegna a Tony Award for best actor in the same role 21 years earlier, in 1984. The 2005 production was directed by Joe Mantello.
He names A Walk on the Moon (1999) as his personal favorite among his own films.
He attended Friends Seminary High School in New York along with Amanda Peet; she was a freshman while he was a senior.
His father has German, Swiss, Danish, Dutch, English, French, Norwegian, Belgian Flemish, Scottish and Welsh ancestry. His mother comes from an Ashkenazi Jewish family (from Poland and Ukraine).
He appeared in two films with Hugh Jackman: Kate & Leopold (2001) and X-Men Origins: Wolverine (2009).
After his parents divorced, he and his siblings saw very little of their father during their childhood.
His first name is often mispronounced as 'leave' or 'LEE-ev'. It is actually pronounced 'lee-EV'.
Along with David Arquette, Neve Campbell, Courteney Cox and Jamie Kennedy, he is one of only five actors to appear in all three 'Scream' films.
Both he and Gary Sinise appear as accomplices in Ransom (1996). About a decade later, in a complete reversal, both actors independently took on roles as crime-fighting team leaders in the hugely popular television series CSI: Crime Scene Investigation (2000). Gary's character in CSI: NY (2004) is 'Detective Mac Taylor', and Liev's character in CSI: Crime Scene Investigation (2000) is 'Michael Keppler'.
As of 2022, he has appeared in 2 films nominated for the Oscar for Best Picture: Spotlight (2015) and Don't Look Up (2021). Of these, Spotlight won in that category.
He worked with Rose McGowan on two different horror films: Scream (1996) and Phantoms (1998).
He appeared in two films with Ben Affleck: Phantoms (1998) and The Sum of All Fears (2002).