The miserable experience Jesse Eisenberg compared to “some kind of genocide”
You might think that, given he has appeared in a good number of immensely popular movies and done all the press and publicity tours that they necessitate, Jesse Eisenberg would be used to being a film star, but for some time, he has actually struggled deeply with all the attention, sometimes quite openly.
Suffering badly with anxiety, Eisenberg has worked hard on turning the affliction into something positive, producing YouTube videos telling people to stop fighting anxiety and to use it instead, to master it and make it an advantage. But that hasn’t made life much simpler for the 42-year-old New Yorker who had a first film role as far back as 2002.
Despite a string of either high-grossing or critically acclaimed movies, sometimes both, Eisenberg finds it nigh on impossible to come to grips with his own fame, or even the day-to-day of life. Just this year, while doing the rounds for his Oscar-nominated film A Real Pain, which he wrote and directed, he was asked about his anxiety and said, “I think I’m too old to change. So I’m still, like, continuously mystified as to, you know, people who seem to walk through the world with their head held high. I don’t understand it.”
Eisenberg first began to experience the harsh light of fame after a pair of similarly named but unrelated comedy movies released in 2009: Adventureland with Kristen Stewart and Zombieland with Woody Harrelson and Emma Stone. Both were sizable indie hits, and the success led to Eisenberg’s casting in David Fincher’s The Social Network the following year.
His performance as Facebook boss Mark Zuckerberg proved to be a defining role for him as he picked up an Academy Award nomination for ‘Best Actor’, pushing him to the top of many casting directors’ wishlists. The next five years or so saw him take on a variety of different roles as opposite as a Woody Allen film and 2016’s DC Comics blockbuster Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice.
Eisenberg played Lex Luther in the film which was directed by Zack Snyder, but it seemed the extra scrutiny brought by appearing in a major comic book adaptation was not one that he particularly enjoyed or desired, indeed when he appeared at 2015’s Comic Con in order to promote the film he rather hyperbolically described the experience as: ”Like being screamed at by thousands of people. I don’t know what the experience is throughout history, probably some kind of genocide. I can’t think of anything that’s equivalent.”
Although he reprised his role in 2021’s Zack Snyder’s Justice League, he changed direction over the following decade and concentrated on his magician franchise, Now You See Me, as well as lower-budget comedies and dramas.
He starred as the titular character in FX’s series Fleishman is in Trouble in 2022 before he made his directorial debut with When You Finish Saving the World, a comedy-drama that he also wrote and was distributed by A24. Then came A Real Pain in 2024, which featured Eisenberg and Kieran Culkin in a film that told the tale of two cousins travelling through Poland to discover the heritage of their Jewish grandmother.
It received two Oscar nominations, one of which Culkin won for ‘Best Supporting Actor’ while Eisenberg picked up a Bafta for ‘Best Screenplay’. Eisenberg will next be seen in an acting capacity in the third movie in the Now You See Me series, called Now You See Me: Now You Don’t, alongside Morgan Freeman.
