Pablo Schrieber and Liev Schrieber (Sylvain Gaboury/DMIPhoto.com)
In “Lights Out,” the new FX show about an ex-heavyweight boxing champ, Pablo Schreiber plays the slugger’s younger brother, who harbors a mixture of jealousy and pride over his sibling’s success.
In real life, Schreiber is the younger half-brother of Liev Schreiber, much-lauded star of film and stage, and father of two sons with actress Naomi Watts.
Is life mirroring art here, or what?
“No,” Schreiber tells The Post, laughing. “Liev and I have a really nice relationship. He’s an incredibly talented actor, and I look up to him a lot.”
In “Lights Out,” which premiered Tuesday, the younger Schreiber, 32, plays shifty Johnny Leary, who acts as manager for his brother Patrick, an ex-heavyweight champ, played by Holt McCallany. Stacy Keach rounds out the cast as the grizzled father and boxing trainer. Facing crushing debt now that Patrick’s winnings have been squandered, the family struggles to keep its New Jersey gym open for business.
That’s the set-up for some classic drama, but the real-life Schreiber family tale actually makes for an equally compelling tale.
The two Schreibers didn’t grow up in a traditional family setting. Pablo was raised by the brothers’ father, Tell Schreiber, in British Columbia and later, after his parents split, in Seattle. Liev grew up in penury with his highly eccentric mother, Tell’s first wife, Heather, on the Lower East Side.
Liev was forced to steal from his mother’s yoga studio to buy sneakers for himself. Pablo had a more stable upbringing, although he’s also the offspring of a hippie mother — a body-based psychotherapist named Lorraine Reaveley.
The stepbrothers didn’t actually meet until Pablo was 16, when he saw his brother in a production of “The Tempest.” But, says Pablo (who is named after the Chilean poet Pablo Neruda) the brothers were both influenced by their father, an acting teacher — in different ways.
“I stayed away from acting for a long time because my dad did it,” he says. “And for Liev, it was something his mysterious father did from far away, and so he was drawn to it.”
Instead of acting, Pablo, wanted to be a basketball star. At 6-foot-4, he went to the University of San Francisco, but when he didn’t make the team he gave in and entered the family business. He enrolled at the prestigious Carnegie Mellon school, and devoted himself to acting.
When he enrolled, Liev was an “up and comer,” with roles in two or three smaller films. By the time Pablo graduated, his big bro was a known entity. Liev eventually would go on to play Shakespearean roles to great acclaim, a killer in the horror franchise “Scream” and direct the movie “Everything Is Illuminated.” His latest film, “Every Day,” opened Friday.
But Pablo wasn’t intimidated. He says he wanted to “forge his own identity” separate from his brother’s.
“I was just always very careful to separate my image and my work life from his,” he says. He once asked Liev to make a call on his behalf. Liev said he would, but asked Pablo if that’s the way he wanted to be known — as Liev’s kid brother. Pablo thought about it and decided he wanted to find success on his own.
It helps that the two look nothing alike. It also helps that Pablo is one talented dude. In 2002, he landed a role in the second season of “The Wire” as Nick Sobotka, a conflicted longshoreman and family man who has to make hard choices as the dock work dries up.
He says he landed the role in part because he was brazen enough to hit on the casting director’s assistant as he walked out of his audition. The now-married father of one says, “She was cute. I think the producer was taken by the fact that I did that, and I think it helped me get the part.”
In 2006, he earned a Tony nomination for his role in Clifford Odets’ “Awake and Sing!” on Broadway. He also won raves for his role opposite Brian Dennehy in Eugene O’Neill’s “Desire Under the Elms” and starred in the 2005 skateboard cult classic “Lords of Dogtown.”
He’s due to appear off-Broadway in Second Stage’s “Gruesome Playground Injuries,” which opens Jan. 31, and also in the soon-due indie flick “Happythankyoumoreplease.”
Pablo says he still gets accosted by rabid “Wire” fans who know him as “Nicky from the docks.” But he doesn’t mind.
“I tend to like people who liked ‘The Wire,’ ” he says. “So when they want to ask me questions about the role and the show, I don’t mind at all. It’s a good problem to have.”