Liev Schreiber

Born: October 4 1967
Where: San Francisco, California, USA

The actor attracted widespread public attention as vice presidential candidate Raymond Shaw in Jonathan Demme's remake of The Manchurian Candidate.

Other high profile appearances include the thriller Sum of All Fears, the romantic comedy Kate & Leopold and Cotton Weary in the Scream series.

In 2005, he also made his directorial debut with the critically acclaimed road movie Everything Is Illuminated with Elijah Wood.

Liev (pronounced Lee-ev) moved with his family from San Francisco to Canada as a baby and, after his parents divorced, with his mother to New York.

Working as a cab driver by day, Shreiber's mother taught him to read but banned him from the cinema (he ended up watching Charlie Chaplin at a revival fleapit).

After initially planning to be a playwright he was encouraged to act and first took to the stage at Hampshire College in Amherst, Massachusetts.

He graduated from the Yale School of Drama in 1992 and went on to study at London's Royal Academy of Music and Dramatic Art.

After working on Broadway as Lionel in The Summer House as well as doing TV narration, he made his big screen debut in Steve Martin's Mixed Nuts.

Early feature work included the independents Party Girl, Big Night, The Daytrippers and Walking and Talking.

In 1996, he made his first appearance as Cotton Weary in the horror spoof Scream and was subsequently cast by Barry Levinson in the sci-fi thriller Sphere.

He played a prizefighter in Jakob the Liar with Robin Williams, opposite Denzel Washington in The Hurricane and even took the role of Orson Welles in the TV movie RKO 281.

Schreiber starred alongside Ethan Hawke in Hamlet as Laertes and then switched styles for the romantic comedy Kate & Leopold.

In 2002, he starred with Ben Affleck in the thriller The Sum of all Fears and went on to reteam with Washington in the psychological thriller The Manchurian Candidate.