Schreiber was born Isaac Liev Schreiber in San Francisco, California, the son of Heather (née Milgram) and Tell Schreiber, a stage actor and director. 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 starSchreiber's mother, who now lives on an ashram inVirginia, 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 a "far-out Socialist Labor Party hippiebohemian 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."
