Liev Schreiber has a new interview with Vulture (NY Mag) to promote his new Showtime series, Ray Donovan. When I had Showtime last year, I remember seeing the ads and promos for the show, and it looked… dark. Heavy. Depressing. I have no idea if it’s going to be a hit – I’m bad at predicting that kind of stuff, I think I predicted that no one would be interested in Breaking Bad. It looks like a “guy show”. Like, if you’re a dude and you love Goodfellas and wish it had more angst and Jon Voight, then this show is your kind of thing. What’s interesting about this Vulture piece is that Liev is… honest? Is that the right word? I mean, he’s strangely cryptic about some things, and you can tell that he has a really dry, biting wit. But I feel like there’s probably some anger or something else (?) behind the wit. You can read the full piece here, and here are some highlights:

He’s a boxer: “I have the kind of face that people want to punch.”

He’s on a new diet: “I grew up vegetarian, and when my grandfather first gave me some pastrami, I remember thinking, Holy shit, where have I been? So I’ve always been skeptical about nutrition, but this is really working.”

Why he plays bad guys: “I have Slavic fat pads that make me look like a chipmunk and arched predatory eyebrows,” says the actor, who is a stew of Russian and Middle European bloodlines. “With that, you’re not going to get funny. That’s why I play so many bad guys.”

Theater work, TV work: “Theater is consistent. You ride your bike to work. You get most of the day off so you can see your kids. My problem is that after three months I go mad. One of the reasons I never thought I could do a TV show is that I hate doing the same thing over and over again.” But that’s also why he signed up for Ray Donovan: “Part of me always feels like things should be hard.”

His character Ray Donovan: “She writes about violence, vulnerability, and the façade of machismo in a glossy, sexy way, but with depth, duality, and humanity,” he explains. “He’s very lonely and very isolated. The contract of marriage, sexuality, relationships, all of that stuff is outdated. Every other social group has gotten an upgrade except for the average white man, and Ray is working on old software, functioning in a world that no longer appreciates men as breadwinners and warriors, and there is a lot of pain in that.”

Living in LA for the show: “I’m f–king homesick,” confesses this child of the Lower East Side. “I miss New Yorkers. I miss the bustle, having people around to walk on the street and look at.”

He never wanted to leave NYC: “When we met, I said to Naomi, ‘I am really crazy about you, but I don’t know that I can live in L.A., and is that okay?’” That was in 2005. She rented her house and went to work on The Painted Veil. “Naomi forced them to hire me. She wanted to continue our relationship, and the only way to do that was to take me on the road with her,” Schreiber says with such a delighted twinkle in his eye that I ask if he’s busting chops. He’s not, he insists: “We wanted to be together, and I’m decent enough to handle that role. It wasn’t, like, total nepotism.”

He describes himself as a manny: Thereafter, he followed her around for three years, “traveling the world and being manny to the children.” Together, they seem to be the rare celebrity couple that people genuinely admire. “I get photographed a lot with my children,” he says. “People see me take them to school, and they seem to like that.”

Why they haven’t gotten married: They have not married, Schreiber confirms. “It’s complicated,” he says tersely, “and it’s private, too.”

On parenting: “It has made me a better person in fits and starts,” he says. “I had been a very selfish person most of my life, and that shifts quickly and dramatically. It’s painful and fascinating and ultimately really wonderful, but I am particularly lucky because I have exquisitely beautiful, talented, brilliant children,” he says, grinning. “If I had had ugly, stupid children, it would’ve been difficult to turn that corner.”

[From Vulture]

“It’s complicated,” he says tersely, “and it’s private, too.” Hunh. Historically, I read Naomi and Liev’s relationship as her being more up for something traditional, that she wanted to get married more than him, and that he was the one saying “If it ain’t broke…” But this makes me wonder. You know Liev was pretty much Naomi’s rebound after Heath Ledger, right? One day Naomi and Heath were together and the next day, Michelle Williams was knocked up and Naomi was with Schreiber. Okay, so maybe my version of the timeline is a little bit off, but I do remember that both Naomi and Heath moved on very quickly.

Oh, and I hate when fathers refer to themselves as the “manny”. You’re not a GD nanny, you’re a FATHER.

Here are some photos of Liev from NY Mag:

Photos courtesy of WENN, NY Mag.