Jesse Eisenberg

Jesse Eisenberg (birthname: Jesse Adam Eisenberg) is an Oscar nominee for Best Actor for his memorable portrayal of Mark Zuckerberg in David Fincher’s The Social Network (2010). Although he may be one of the most identifiable in the group of “smart” young Hollywood actors (Eisenberg having made his mark depicting smart, or smart-ass, characters), Eisenberg is having a stealth career as an author, filmmaker, and producer, having written a short story collection titled Bream Gives Me Hiccups: And Other Stories (2015) and written and directed his debut feature, When You Finish Saving the World (2022), starring Julianne Moore and Finn Wolfhard, and premiering in Semaine de la Critique at the 2022 Cannes Film Festival.

He has also recently begun to executive produce various movies in which he stars or co-stars or documentaries, including Jeremy Workman’s The World Before Your Feet (2018); Lorcan Finnegan’s sci-fi horror movie, Vivarium (2019), with Imogen Poots; and writer-director Lyle Mitchell Corbine Jr.’s indie drama, Wild Indian (2021), with Michael Greyeyes, Chaske Spencer, and Kate Bosworth, premiering at the Sundance Film Festival. Eisenberg received the Heart of Sarajevo Prize, the Sarajevo Film Festival’s annual award for acknowledgment of a major film career, in August 2022.

Jesse Eisenberg earned plaudits for his debut performance opposite Campbell Scott in Dylan Kidd’s sex comedy, Roger Dodger (2002), with Isabella Rossellini, Elizabeth Berkley, and Jennifer Beals. He had small roles in Michael Hoffman’s The Emperor’s Club (2002) and M. Night Shyamalan’s The Village (2004), before landing the choice role of Walt in writer-director Noah Baumbach’s fine comedy-drama, The Squid and the Whale (2005), with Laura Linney, William Baldwin, and Anna Paquin, and which earned Baumbach the rare awards sweep of the top four American film critics organizations for best screenplay.

Eisenberg’s first genre foray was in Wes Craven’s werewolf comedy, Cursed (2005), with Christina Ricci and Joshua Jackson. Eisenberg’s first starring (and title) role was in Fred Durst’s debut, The Education of Charlie Banks (2007), followed by the wonderful and overlooked indie directed by Sol Tryon, The Living Wake (2007), with a colorful cast including Jim Gaffigan, Ann Dowd, and Bryan Brown. With Kristen Stewart, Bill Hader, Kristen Wiig, and Ryan Reynolds, Eisenberg enjoyed greater attention in Greg Mottola’s terrific ensemble comedy-drama, Adventureland (2009).

Jesse Eisenberg joined another, more rollicking ensemble, Ruben Fleischer’s zombie comedy debut for Columbia Pictures, Zombieland (2009), with Woody Harrelson, Emma Stone, Abigail Breslin, and Bill Murray, which launched the sequel also directed by Fleischer, Zombieland: Double Tap (2019), with new cast members Rosario Dawson, Zoey Deutch, and Luke Wilson. Eisenberg’s breakthrough was in 2010 with his dazzling, dark enactment of Facebook creator/founder Mark Zuckerberg (and a rare and highly unflattering portrait of a living corporate titan) in David Fincher’s The Social Network, with Andrew Garfield, Justin Timberlake, Armie Hammer, and Max Minghella.

Eisenberg was nominated for Best Actor across many major awards, including the Oscar, BAFTA, Golden Globes, Screen Actors Guild, and a National Society of Film Critics win. In his first voice performance for animation, Eisenberg starred in Blue Sky Studios/20^th Century Fox Animation’s Rio (2011), with Anne Hathaway, will. i.am, Jamie Foxx, and Tracy Morgan (and earning $484 million worldwide); Eisenberg returned to the project’s sequel, Rio 2 (2014), with new cast members Bruno Mars, Andy Garcia, Kristin Chenoweth, and Tracy Morgan, and outgrossing the original with a global box office take of nearly $500 million. Eisenberg reunited with director Fleischer for the true-story comedy thriller, 30 Minutes or Less (2011), with Aziz Ansari and Danny McBride.

Although he once provoked a cease-and-desist order from Woody Allen’s attorneys for a screenplay he wrote about Allen’s life, Jesse Eisenberg co-starred in two Woody Allen movies, starting in 2012 with the rom-com To Rome with Love (2012), with Alec Baldwin, Roberto Benigni, Penelope Cruz, Judy Davis, Greta Gerwig, and Elliot Page; and continuing in 2016 with Café Society, with Jeannie Berlin, Steve Carell, Blake Lively, Parker Posey, and Kristen Stewart.

Each film world premiered at the Cannes Film Festival and earned a combined worldwide gross of $116 million. Eisenberg led a starry ensemble in one of his most successful commercial ventures, Now You See Me (2016), with Mark Ruffalo, Woody Harrelson, Melanie Laurent, Common, Michael Caine, and Morgan Freeman, totaling $352 million for Lionsgate, which also released the sequel starring Eisenberg, Now You See Me 2 (2016), with new cast members Jay Chou and Sanaa Lathan and earning $334 million worldwide.

Eisenberg joined the strong cast of Dakota Fanning and Peter Saragaard for Kelly Reichardt’s superb eco-thriller, Night Moves (2013), co-written by Jonathan Raymond, and premiering in competition at the 70^th edition of the Venice Film Festival and winning the Grand Prix at the Deauville Film Festival. Tackling Dostoevsky, Eisenberg portrayed the Russian novelist’s title character in The Double (2013), directed and co-written by Richard Ayoade and co-starring Mia Wasikowska, and then turned to the complex literary world of the late novelist David Foster Wallace in James Ponsoldt’s/Donald Margulies’ The End of the Tour (2015), with Jason Segal as Wallace and Eisenberg as Rolling Stone reporter David Lipsky.

The brilliant Norwegian writing-directing team of Eskil Vogt and Joachim Trier’s only English-language film, Louder Than Bombs (2015), starred Eisenberg with Isabelle Huppert, Gabriel Byrne, Amy Ryan, and David Strathairn, and competed in the 2015 edition of the Cannes Film Festival. Eisenberg reunited with Kristen Stewart for the third time in Nima Nourizadeh’s comedy, American Ultra (2015), with Topher Grace, Walton Goggins, John Leguizamo, and Bill Pullman. In an odd move, Eisenberg took on the unlikely role of DC Comics arch-nemesis Lex Luthor in Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice (2016) and Justice League (2017), directed by Zack Snyder.

The exotic topic of high-frequency trading was the subject of writer-director Kim Nguyen’s The Hummingbird Project (2018), starring Eisenberg and co-starring Alexander Skarsgård, and Salma Hayek, and which premiered at the Toronto Film Festival. Eisenberg starred in Riley Stearns’ black comedy with a martial arts twist, The Art of Self-Defense (2019), premiering at the South by Southwest Film Festival, with Alessandro Nivola and Imogen Poots. Eisenberg tackled one of his occasional real-life portrayals (as mime artist Marcel Marceau, battling Nazis) in writer-director Jonathan Jakubowicz’s little-seen biopic, Resistance (2020) for IFC Films.

Jesse Eisenberg is a prolific writer, as the author of four plays (Asuncion in 2011, The Revisionist in 2013, The Spoils and A Little Part of All of Us in 2015); a short story collection (Bream Gives Me Hiccups: And Other Stories) published by Grove Press in 2015; twenty contributions to the literary journal McSweeney’s (including several stories published in Bream Gives Me Hiccups); eighteen contributions to the New Yorker Magazine’s “Shouts & Murmurs” column, many of them focused on the New York Knicks.