In 1983, Heather Milgram bought her son a motorcycle for his sixteenth birthday. She explained that the gift was meant to encourage him to be fearless. Given what his childhood had already been like, the decision was perhaps fitting.
By then, Schreiber had experienced an unusual upbringing. He had lived with his mother in a Lower East Side walkup that lacked both electricity and running water. He also spent time at a yoga ashram in Connecticut, where he used a Hindu name selected by his mother. She did not allow him to watch colour movies until he turned ten. His first colour film was Star Wars in 1977. Before that, he watched Charlie Chaplin and Basil Rathbone at a black-and-white revival cinema close to their neighbourhood.
Heather Milgram is ninety-one years old. She currently lives at an ashram in rural Virginia and has not given an interview for publication in more than twenty-five years.
Heather Milgram Biography
| Detail | Information |
|---|---|
| Full Name | Heather Milgram |
| Also Known As | Heather Schreiber |
| Date of Birth | July 26, 1934 (IMDb) |
| Age | 91 years (as of 2026) |
| Birthplace | Brooklyn, New York, USA (IMDb) |
| Nationality | American |
| Profession | Painter / Artist; also credited as an actress (IMDb) |
| Known For | Mother of actor Liev Schreiber |
| Children | Four |
| Famous Son | Liev Schreiber |
| Spouse | Tell Schreiber |
| Film Credit | White Crow (2005) (IMDb) |
Who Is Heather Milgram?
Heather Milgram is an American painter best known publicly as the mother of actor Liev Schreiber. She was born on July 26, 1934, in Brooklyn, New York, and married three times during her life. She has four children.
She also appeared under the name Heather Schreiber and has one IMDb screen credit. That credit is for the 2005 movie White Crow, where she was prominently featured. Since at least the 1970s, she has been associated with the Integral Yoga movement established by Swami Satchidananda. She now lives at Satchidananda Ashram, Yogaville, in Buckingham County, Virginia.
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Her Family Background in Brooklyn
Heather’s father, Alexander Milgram, came to the United States from the Russian Empire and eventually settled in Brooklyn. He played the cello, collected etchings by Pierre-Auguste Renoir, and supported the family by delivering meat to restaurants throughout the city. Her mother, Hazel, was born in New York in 1909.
The family lived a working-class life and held Communist political beliefs. Music, especially classical music, and Russian literature were important in the household. Those interests remained part of Heather’s life as she grew older and were also passed on to her son. Her father, Alex Milgram, became an especially important male figure during Liev Schreiber’s childhood and played a much greater role in his upbringing than Liev’s biological father.
A rarely mentioned part of Heather Milgram’s early life is that her mother was lobotomised when Heather was twelve years old. The detail was reported by critic John Lahr in a December 1999 New Yorker profile of Liev Schreiber. It provides important background for understanding some of Heather’s later decisions, especially her documented fear of psychiatric institutions and the events that followed.
Three Marriages and the Road to San Francisco
Heather married Jack Lemkin in 1953, but their marriage ended after two years. In 1956, she entered her second marriage with Jeremy S. Connolly. Before she met Tell Schreiber, she already had three sons from her earlier marriages. Reliable public sources have not documented their names.
Tell Carroll Schreiber III was seven years younger than Heather. He came from a wealthy Protestant family in Bucks County, Pennsylvania, graduated from Dartmouth, and had previously been a wrestler. Heather and Tell married in San Francisco, where Liev Schreiber was born on October 4, 1967.
A Breakdown, British Columbia, and a Custody Battle
According to Tell Schreiber’s own account, Heather experienced a serious adverse reaction to LSD not long after their marriage. During the next four years, she was hospitalised several times and received therapy. Tell eventually moved the family to Winlaw, a small rural community in the southern interior of British Columbia, believing that the change of surroundings might help her recover.
Instead, the situation became more difficult. After Tell threatened to have Heather permanently committed to a mental institution, she left with Liev.
Tell hired private detectives, who followed their movements from one state to another. When Liev was three years old, Tell found him at an upstate New York commune where Heather had established herself and took the child back. The custody dispute that followed lasted long enough and became expensive enough to financially destroy her father, Alex Milgram. Heather ultimately won custody, and the divorce was finalised around 1972.
By the time Liev reached four, he and Heather were living in a fourth-floor walkup at First Avenue and First Street on Manhattan’s Lower East Side. His half-brothers from Heather’s previous marriages lived elsewhere in the city with their father in a duplex on Central Park West.
How Heather Milgram Raised Liev Schreiber on the Lower East Side
Their Lower East Side apartment had candles placed into the brickwork to provide light. Mother and son slept together on a mattress on the floor, and the apartment had no running water. In one of the few direct comments Heather made publicly about those years, she described the experience as romantic. The word was recorded in the 1999 New Yorker profile and remains among the rare descriptions she gave of her own circumstances.
To provide for herself and Liev, Heather worked several jobs and took on different kinds of work:
- Drove a cab in New York City
- Created and sold papier-mâché puppets on the street
- Searched through discarded garbage for materials she could use
- Worked at the Integral Yoga Institute, the New York centre of Swami Satchidananda’s organisation
There were periods when the two depended on welfare. Heather also taught Liev how to read while they were living in that apartment.
Her approach to raising Liev included a number of deliberate choices:
- She gave him the Hindu name Shiva Das
- She dressed him in yoga shirts and allowed his hair to grow to his shoulders
- She required him to follow a strictly vegetarian diet
- She completely prohibited colour films during his childhood
- When he was twelve, she enrolled him at the Satchidananda Ashram, Yogaville East, in Pomfret, Connecticut, where he used the name Shiva Das
In 1977, Star Wars became the first colour film Liev Schreiber ever watched. He was ten years old at the time. Until then, his favourite screen figures had been Chaplin and Rathbone. Six years later, in 1983, Heather purchased the motorcycle for his sixteenth birthday and explained her reason for giving it to him.
Heather Milgram: Key Life Events
| YearEvent | |
|---|---|
| 1934 | Born July 26 in Brooklyn, New York |
| c. 1946 | Her mother is lobotomised; Heather is twelve |
| 1953 | Marries Jack Lemkin |
| 1955 | Divorces Jack Lemkin |
| 1956 | Marries Jeremy S. Connolly |
| 1967 | Liev Schreiber born in San Francisco, October 4 |
| c. 1968 | Family moves to Winlaw, British Columbia |
| c. 1972 | Divorces Tell Schreiber; settles on Manhattan’s Lower East Side |
| 1977 | Liev sees his first colour film, Star Wars, aged ten |
| 1979 | Enrolls Liev at Satchidananda Ashram, Pomfret, Connecticut |
| 1983 | Buys Liev a motorcycle for his sixteenth birthday |
| 1999 | Speaks to the New Yorker. Last known public statement |
| 2005 | Appears in White Crow, credited as Heather Schreiber |
| 2021 | Tell Schreiber dies in Seattle, March 1, aged seventy-nine |
What Liev Schreiber Has Said About His Mother
Over more than three decades of interviews, Liev Schreiber has discussed Heather Milgram and his childhood. One description that has continued to appear in writing about her comes from John Lahr’s 1999 New Yorker profile. Schreiber described his mother as “a far-out Socialist Labor Party hippie bohemian freak who hung out with William Burroughs.”
After the birth of his son Sasha in 2008, Schreiber spoke with W Magazine about his mother and said:
“Since I’ve had Sasha, I’ve completely identified with everything my mother went through raising me. And I think her choices were inspired.”
After becoming financially successful enough to do so, he bought his mother a swimming pool.
John Lahr also wrote an often-repeated observation about the influence Heather’s parenting had on Liev’s acting career:
“To a large extent, Schreiber’s professional shape-shifting and his uncanny instinct for isolating the frightened, frail, goofy parts of his characters are a result of being forced to adapt to his mother’s eccentricities. It’s both his grief and his gift.”
Later articles have frequently repeated only part of that observation. The positive idea of the “gift” is often included, while the reference to “grief” is usually left out.
Where Is Heather Milgram Now?
Heather Milgram lives at Yogaville, the Satchidananda Ashram located in Buckingham County, Virginia. The site covers six hundred acres beside the James River and serves as the international headquarters of Swami Satchidananda’s Integral Yoga organisation.
Her relationship with the movement goes back through much of her adult life. While Liev was young, she worked at the Integral Yoga Institute in New York. When he was twelve, she sent him to the Connecticut ashram. Her connection with the organisation ultimately led to Yogaville.
Tell Schreiber died on March 1, 2021, in Seattle at the age of seventy-nine following a two-month battle with cancer. In his later years, he worked as a woodworker and community theatre director on Bainbridge Island, Washington. By the time he died, he and Heather had been divorced for almost fifty years.
Heather Milgram’s last known public statement was made in December 1999 to the New Yorker. At the time, she said: “I think I liked silence and not being connected to the world.”
For the twenty-five years that followed, most accounts of Heather Milgram’s life have been reconstructed through the stories and recollections of other people rather than through her own public statements.
What is Heather Milgram known for?
Heather Milgram is best known as the mother of actor Liev Schreiber. She is also described as a painter and has an acting credit for White Crow (2005).
What is Heather Milgram’s real name?
Heather Milgram is her birth name. She has also been identified as Heather Schreiber in biographical and entertainment records.
Who is Heather Milgram’s famous son?
Her son is Liev Schreiber, the American actor known for films, television, and theater. Biographical sources identify Heather Milgram as his mother.
What was Heather Milgram’s profession?
Heather Milgram is primarily described as a painter. Accounts of her life also mention other creative work, while IMDb lists her as an actress known for White Crow.
Where did Heather Milgram live with Liev Schreiber?
Heather and Liev spent part of his childhood in New York City, where she supported the family by driving a taxi. Biographical accounts describe their unconventional and financially difficult living circumstances during those years.
Conclusion
Heather Milgram’s life story is closely connected with the childhood and upbringing of her son, actor Liev Schreiber. From her early years in Brooklyn and three marriages to her unconventional approach to raising Liev, her journey included many unusual experiences and challenges. She worked different jobs, followed the Integral Yoga movement, and made several choices that strongly influenced her son’s early life and perspective.
Although Heather Milgram has largely stayed away from public attention for many years, her story continues to attract interest because of her connection to Liev Schreiber and her distinctive lifestyle. Her experiences, creative background, and role as a mother provide important context for understanding Liev’s childhood. Today, she remains a private figure whose life has mostly been documented through accounts from others rather than frequent public interviews.
