With his day-old stubble and the tough-guy bearing of someone who has spent decades portraying fearsome characters like Ray Donovan and the X-Men’s Sabretooth, Liev Schreiber doesn’t look like a man who is afraid of anything. But he has a confession to make. “I’ve always been terrified of chickens,” he says. “They look like dinosaurs.”
It’s not clear why someone who lives in a NoHo triplex would even mention his phobia of fowl—until Schreiber climbs the blackened-steel spiral staircase to the roof. There, wisteria blooms on trellises, raspberries ripen on bushes, a cold-plunge pool commands sweeping views of downtown Manhattan—and a chicken coop looms in the corner.
Liev hangs back as his wife, Taylor, tosses a handful of worms inside to Grandma, Sizzurp, Fern, Pico, and Miu Miu—a clucking brood whose eggs are packed into custom cartons stamped Hazel’s Hens, named for the couple’s toddler daughter, Hazel Bee. Visitors often leave with half a dozen.
Naturally, the chickens were Taylor’s idea. When she joined Liev in the apartment he has owned in one shape or form since 1998, she had two requests: soften its man-cave edge and create an outdoor refuge reminiscent of the corn and soy farm where she grew up in South Dakota. “We had sheep and pigs and chickens,” she recalls. “So making a green space on the roof was really important to me.”
In the living room, a vintage DS-600 Snake sofa by De Sede curves around a circa 1970 T22 L’oeil elm coffee table by Pierre Chapo. Scout, the family dog, rests on one of a pair of 1960s armchairs by Joseph-André Motte for Artifort. Walls painted in Benjamin Moore’s White Dove; rug by Nordic Knots. Artworks include a piece by Mantua Nangala (above sofa), a screen print by Jonathan Safran Foer, and sculptures by Jill Platner.
ART: © Mantua Nangala / Copyright Agency. Licensed by Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York, 2026. Jonathan Safran Foer / LeRoy Neiman Center for Print Studies, Columbia University.
A 1960s Taraxacum cocoon pendant by Achille and Pier Giacomo Castiglioni for Flos hangs over a custom dining table surrounded by vintage walnut grass-seated chairs by George Nakashima. A 1956 Pablo Picasso white earthenware plate is displayed on the plaster chimney breast beyond.
ART: © 2026 Estate of Pablo Picasso / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. © 2026 Calder Foundation, New York / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York.