It has barely been five minutes into the conversation and I already want to give Liev Schreiber a hug.

After all, the intense-looking, impossibly tall and imposing actor wasn’t at all what I had imagined him to be. In person, there are no traces of the characters he has played, whether it’s the shady Hollywood fixer Ray Donovan from the television series of the same name, Sabretooth in X-Men Origins: Wolverine, or Orson Welles in the docu-drama RKO 281.

Instead, you had regular ol’ Liev, Tony Award-winning indie film and theatre vet, dedicated family guy (he has two kids with actress-wife Naomi Watts), and … a fan of Singapore Airlines?

“Hey, Singapore! You guys have the best airlines there, don’t you? I’ve transited in your airport but I’ll have to visit you guys one day,” he quipped.

Next up for the 48-year-old actor-producer-director is The 5th Wave, a film based on author Rick Yancey’s popular young adult sci-fi novel, where the story’s young protagonist (played by Chloe Grace Moretz) is trying to survive in a world that has been decimated by earth-shattering events unleashed by some unknown force. Schreiber comes in as Vosch, whom he described as “the leader of the embittered and broken military … tasked with rounding up the survivors and training them, preparing them for combat”.

A noted Shakespearean actor and documentary narrator when he’s not going all Hollywood on us, Schreiber’s famously cerebral side comes through clearly when chatting with him — even when it comes to science fiction.

“I’ve always been a sucker for the genre. I get drawn into sci-fi movies. Like all great science fiction, from (authors) Bradbury to Asimov, it has nothing to do with beings from outer space. It’s always some projection or fantasy or question about ourselves that we want to use the genre for. The 5th Wave fits into that tradition. It asks the question: Who is the ‘Other’?”

He also revealed it was a certain Tobey Maguire who turned him on to The 5th Wave. The former Spider-Man — who had become firm friends with the former Sabretooth while working on the 2014 thriller Pawn Sacrifice — is one of the producers of the cinematic adaptation of the novel.

“Tobey did a little bit of a Godfather on me,” laughed Schreiber, referring to the fictional mafia played by Marlon Brando. “He mumbled like Marlon Brando and said that I had to do this for him or I’d get a horse’s head in my bed.”

And speaking of cinematic horror moments, does he think disaster movies such as The 5th Wave have a stronger impact on moviegoers today than in the past? After all, it seems disasters take place left, right and centre nowadays.

“Were there more natural disasters now than there were 20 years ago? Or is it just that they’re more prevalent in the news now? I don’t know,” he ventured. “I mean we had Three Mile Island (a nuclear meltdown in 1979). We had the massive earthquake in Anaheim. I don’t know. I think that it certainly seems to be a cultural thing, not just in the film industry but also in the news media; it plays on our fears. I think that it is human nature to be drawn to that and to be compelled to watch.”

So what sort of natural disaster would scare this brawny and brainy actor?

“I’m more nervous about the bubonic plague-type of disaster. I think that kind of ‘dying from the inside out’ is the one that bothers me most,” he revealed. “But I think in all fairness, one of the things that this film tries to do is look at some of these ‘what if’ scenarios and it demonstrates how we might manage to overcome them, which is something distinctly human. For me, essentially, that is the theme and the heart of the film. We’re like cockroaches. We’re very hard to wipe out and there’s something that I find very optimistic about that and encouraging — even when I think about the bubonic plague,” he said, with a laugh.

But it’s not all doom and gloom on a massive scale for Schreiber. There’s the little things like, well, taking time to cope with and understand his rising celebrity and profile.

“It’s been very gradual over the years,” he shared. “For me, it’s getting acclimated to it, which I think I am now. There was a time when I was more alarmed and it was more disconcerting. (But) the truth is that, at the core of it, it’s really great when someone appreciates what you do and when someone stops you in the street and says that they’ve seen something and they like it.”

And, perhaps, even a hug or two?

The 5th Wave opens in cinemas tomorrow.