For some of us, Jesse Eisenberg is a legend of cinema. The actor was a complete staple of our screens for many years, and starred in hit movies such as Zombieland, Adventureland, The Squid and the Whale and even as Lex Luthor in Zac Snyder’s Batman vs. Superman: Dawn of Justice and Justice League.
However, at one point or another, it seemed that the thirty-nine-year-old actor just stopped appearing in things. One day, he was everywhere, but the next, Eisenberg was nowhere to be seen.
Okay, maybe things weren’t quite that dramatic, but it does seem like the actor has certainly slowed down in recent years. His last movie acting credits are 2021’s Wild Indian, as well as Zack Snyder’s cut of Justice League that came out in the same year, but was filmed years prior.
It’s incredibly surprising when you consider the sheer success that the star saw in the early years of his career.
His leading role as Mark Zuckerberg in The Social Network won him all sorts of praise, including something that all actors lust over – an Oscar nomination.
However, it seems that Eisenberg is happy with where he’s at. He recently opened up to Esquire about how he isn’t one to go back and watch the movies he’s featured in. As a result, he has become a lot more concerned with finding roles that excite him, and seem like they would be fun to play.
Speaking to the outlet, he said: “I’ve worked with people who have made a lot of movies too, and they’re not always amazing.
“I don’t watch the movies I’m in, so I really just focus on the experiences I’m going to have and what character I’m going to play and live with and feel like.
“So I guess I’m less concerned with the final product and more concerned with just doing what’s exciting at the moment.”
Furthermore, his most recent project, When You Finish Saving The World, sees Eisenberg move from in front of the camera to behind it.
The New York native has both written and directed the movie, which stars Still Alice‘s Julianne Moore and Finn Wolfhard from Stranger Things.
When writing the movie, Eisenberg explains that his acting experience gave him a different perspective on things: “As an actor, I’m often tasked with playing parts that are pawns in the story.
“Maybe my character is supposed to be the writer’s commentary on a certain thing. And I resent trying to play that kind of thing, because it’s not how actors work.
“You don’t think of yourself as a representation of something – you think of yourself as a person.
“So I think when I’m writing characters, I provide them with the same sensibility, which is that no one is a cliché or a half-formed idea that I’m using to show how clever I am about liberal hypocrisy.”
He continued to explain that the project didn’t actually begin as a film, but instead as an audiobook.
“I wrote a novel-length book, which is a 6-hour audio play. And I wrote from these characters’ perspectives.
“So they’re not stand-ins for my clever ideology. They’re full-fledged people who I thought about off the page.”
