Liev Schreiber is a tall, slightly baby-faced actor of stage and screen, recognized by moviegoers as Cotton Weary in the Scream series of horror films (1996-2000). A Yale School of Drama grad, he has spent as much time on stage as he has on movie screens. In 2005 he won a Tony Award as best featured actor in a play, for his role in the revival of Glengarry Glen Ross. He also won critical acclaim (and a Tony nomination) as the star of the 2007 Broadway revival of the play Talk Radio. His films include Big Night (1996), Sphere (1998, starring Dustin Hoffman), The Sum of All Fears (2002, starring Morgan Freeman), and the horror remake The Omen (2006, with Schreiber in the Gregory Peck role from the 1976 original). Schreiber also won critical raves for his portrayal of Orson Welles in the 1999 film RKO 281. Now he co-stars as Victor Creed (Sabretooth) in the spin-off film X-Men Origins: Wolverine, which stars Hugh Jackman.

DCM: Did you ever think you'd be doing a comic book movie like Wolverine?

Liev Schreiber: No, I didn't. You never know what the Powers That Be will think or do. You do the audition with passion and maybe, maybe you'll get a part. I was glad that I did get it though.

DCM: Did Hugh Jackman have any advice for you since this is a big action movie with a lot of stunts and fights?

Schreiber: Lift weights. [Laughter] I lifted weights, and I ate an army of chickens to bulk up.

DCM: So, what can you say about that film, just to touch on it a little, as the character of Victor Creed who is also Sabretooth.

Schreiber: I'm very excited about it. I think it's going to be really very good. It's hard for me to say. But I'm really looking forward to people seeing it. It was insanely fun. I felt again, I felt very self-conscious initially because I knew fans didn't like that idea of me playing Sabretooth. I think I am perceived as a kind of urbane New York...l don't know maybe I've done too many movies with Jewish characters [Laughter] and they're like "It's like Woody Allen playing Sabretooth" and I'm like no, actually it's not. I'm 6 foot 3, I'm bigger than Hugh Jackman [Laughter] I can do the part.

DCM: It must be fun doing a movie like that, one that is much dif­ferent from other ones that you have done? It does get boring do the same kind of roles over and over.

Schreiber: I found it to be really intense. The character I play is incredibly brutal and feral, has blood lust unlike any other charac­ter I've ever played. This guy is a real killer with no remorse.

DCM: Why did you want to do Wolverine? What was the attraction?

Schreiber: I hope I'm not blowing anyone's cover here, but I don't think men really mature intellectually and emotionally beyond 22. Your bodies evolve, but nothing else, really. And so why should I stop wanting to be in a comic book movie?

DCM: What was your point of entry? Were you familiar with your character from the comic books at all? Sabretooth is the Joker to Wolverine's Batman. He's the bad guy for Wolverine in the comics and has been since the late 80's when he was introduced.

Schreiber: Yes he is. I was a fan of the comic books. I just loved the character of Wolverine. I always have. But I also knew the Uni­verse and all the other characters and their relationships in it. I liked the X-Men films a lot and that sort of deeply ironic and very urban sensibility in a superhero movie was something that I thought was really groundbreaking. And the style of writing was particularly, that very sort of editorial style, I just always loved it. And I think that we were able to capture some of that darkness in this movie, so I'm very proud of it. I read the comics before I got offered the part. I mean, I knew the character really well. Initially I was asked to play Stryker and I asked "Is there any chance I might be able to play this Victor Creed guy?" The research that I did on it, Victor's particular mutant issue has nothing to do with his name Sabretooth, but that was the place I decided to start. Just what is a Sabretooth and how does that work? How do they move? What are their behavioral characteristics? I knew this stuff from the comic, I knew that he was just a complete savage street fighter and that was his MO, but what I hadn't seen in some of the earlier comics that I was curious to kind of pursue is what drives the guy and what are the kind of qualities that makes him tick.

DCM: Did you enjoy working with Hugh on the fights?

Schreiber: I love Hugh. I mean, Hugh is the reason I did it. We'd been friends for a long time and it's just so much fun to work with him. To do fight scenes with Hugh was really terrific, because as a dancer, he has that kind of discipline and choreography. And I always studied to be a fight choreographer, and always wanted to be a dancer too, but didn't quite have the feet for it. But we had some remarkable fight scenes together, and I'm looking forward to people seeing those.

DCM: Can you take him in a fight?

Schreiber: I can take him. [Laughter] No, I really can! In fact I do. But the reality is that he's become - since I've known him, and I've known him a long time - has become this colossus of a man. He's like huge and muscles everywhere and I have to play this guy who whoops his ass. So as soon as I was finished Defiance, I began this kind of four month training period, and did this weight-lifting-and-genocide-of-chickens phase of my life where I just got bigger and bigger and it was awful on one end but amazing and fun on the other. When I finally got there and I got to choreograph the fights with Hugh and get on the wire and do the work, it was fun but also a lot of long days and hard work. The more effects that a film has the slower the process to make sure that they get every­thing that they need on film, but it was worth it.