"“Always be the smartest guy in the room.” That’s the motto of Jesse Eisenberg’s magician character in Now You See Me, the latest, admirably slick action caper from director Louis Leterrier. But it could also be the star’s personal mantra.
The 29-year-old Queens, New York native took up acting at the age of nine to combat crippling social anxiety. It was better medicine than any therapist might have provided. Eisenberg should know. In true New Yorker fashion, he currently has two of them.
An intense looking character, Eisenberg spent a decade playing socially inept geeks in films such as Roger Dodger, The Squid And The Whale, Adventureland and Zombieland.
However, it was his starring role in The Social Network, in which he played Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, that changed his career. Were it not for the presence of an awards-bait period drama about a loveable British monarch, the 2011 Best Actor Oscar would surely have been his.
In person, he’s unfailingly polite, though he does project the same nervy energy that’s visible onscreen. Eisenberg clearly doesn’t like the interview circus that surrounds movie releases – but once he gets going, he talks openly and well.
“It does make you question whether you can do a movie,” the actor reflects. “Will you be able to actually talk about it for so many months?
It makes the decision not just about the acting – it’s not just the movie. It’s about being an ambassador for it.”
He has more reason to be wary of the commercial nature of film promotion than most. In 2011, Eisenberg sued Lionsgate studios after they splashed his face all over the promotional material for Camp Hell, a low- budget horror that he appeared in for mere minutes.
“Yeah, that’s the most egregious expression of commodifying an actor,” he oberves. “I didn’t really have a part in the movie. It was just that my friend was directing it. So as a favour, I worked for, like, half-a-day on something – but then they splash my face across the poster. The reason they pay actors a lot of money is to be commodified, and I understand that. I’m not blind to that or stupid or unappreciative. But there are certain ways of doing it that don’t feel like it’s a violation or taking advantage.”
In contrast, Eisenberg is more than happy to promote Now You See Me.
“I was initially worried that the actors wouldn’t be treated as the primary focus, because there were so many other things happening in terms of action and special effects. It just wasn’t the case at all. When I met with Louis, he gave me all these obscure French films, these very dark movies, and said he wanted the acting to be like that. He wanted the acting to be great and to be taken very seriously.
“He hired eight actors who have very strong opinions about what they do,” he adds. “I come from theatre and independent movies, and Mark Ruffalo is the same. Michael Caine and Morgan Freeman have very strong opinions about what they do, and Woody Harrelson is one of the strongest-minded people I’ve ever met. If Louis wanted actors to just run around his circus, he wouldn’t have hired us.”
Jesse Eisenberg is no one-trick pony. He recently starred alongside Vanessa Redgrave at the Cherry Lane Theatre in New York, in his own play The Revisionist, which garnered great reviews. In it, he plays a sci-fi novelist who travels to Poland to stay with his second cousin, and in spite of his arrogance, the two form a bond. The dialogue is characteristically littered with cultural signifiers and references, from Martin Luther King quotes to the use of a Cornel West Reader onstage. Eisenberg also uses his family’s experience of World War II both to shape Redgrave’s character, and to offer some challenging insights into his own generation’s attitude towards the Holocaust.
“Most of my family was killed during the war,” he reflects, “so it was personal in that sense. But I don’t really have any sanctimonious point to make – there’s nothing new I can say about it, and I’m very aware of that. So I talk about it from the perspective of how my generation sees it, which is equal parts horror and boredom. Horror because itis so horrific, and boredom because you’ve been hearing about it endlessly since you were young. It doesn’t affect you on a day-to-day level. So that’s what I was trying to present in the play. I’d never seen anyone discuss it in the way that I discuss it, expressing the nuance of the third generation’s reaction to a horrific event – which is to feel very alienated from it.”
The themes explored in The Revisionist – emotional detachment and arrogance – are in contrast to the concerns probed in his first play, Asuncion, a satire that examines how white guilt and political correctness can force patronising victim-narratives onto minorities. Again, the play was inspired by events in Eisenberg’s own life.
“I was mugged,” he recalls, “and I kind of apologised for my attackers because I thought, ‘Oh well, they grew up in a poor neighbourhood, so where else are they going to get money?’ Or actually, they didn’t even get money – so I was thinking, ‘Oh, where else are they going to enjoy themselves?’ And, then, I realised what an ignorant thing that was for me to think – because by expecting them to mug me, it makes me that much more ignorant than by treating them as individuals who have done something wrong, and should be held accountable.
“So I started thinking about that and how interesting it is that I immediately drew that dumb conclusion – so that’s how the play starts. And then there’s this competing character in the play, who actually sees himself as someone who has integrated into black culture, even though he’s white; so it’s kind of the flipside of having too much sympathy for poor people or a minority culture, which is to feel like you’re part of it – which is also kind of erroneous.”
While he loves film, as a writer there are distinct advantages to working in theatre.
“Yeah, playwrights get a lot more control,” he notes. “In movies, actors change the dialogue all the time, and you ad-lib and improvise – whereas in plays, actors really don’t change the dialogue. Playwrights also – well, at least in my case – help choose what goes on the poster and how it’s marketed. To be consulted on stuff like that is great, because you want the play to be framed in the way that you intended it to be.”
While the differences between film and theatre are manifold, Jesse Eisenberg is also acutely aware of the extent to which – whether acting or writing – artists have to expose themselves through their work. It’s an occupational hazard that you have to live with – or get out of the game.
“With acting a lot of the time it’s people scrutinising your face,” he observes. “With writing, they’re scrutinising your thoughts – so both feel particularly invasive, to be honest. That’s why I don’t like watching things I’ve been in, because I don’t want to be aware of myself as some sort of specimen. I like the artistry of acting, but again it comes back to that commodification of actors and the way people are discussed and scrutinised. And I should say that for women it’s probably a million times worse than it is for men.”
On stage, was he ever tempted to take a leaf from Helen Mirren or Hugh Jackman’s book by stopping a performance because of distractions from the auditorium?
“Have they done that? Wow, yeah,” he smiles. “People really don’t seem to realise their own behaviour – or don’t care – so they sit in the front-row opening candies. And cell- phones really have become a hindrance. It’s infuriating. The audience is a necessary part of theatre: sometimes you feed off them if the energy is positive. But, honestly, my feeling about New York theatre is that ninety percent of the audience are there to hate it. You can sense it in the room, people deliberately not laughing at something because they feel competitive with you because they’re also part of New York theatre! And ten percent of people there are there to enjoy it and they’re quiet.”
His aptitude for playing highly-strung, anxiety-wracked characters has inspired comparisons to Woody Allen. Does he channel his own neuroses?
“I have done, a few times, and I like it,” he smiles, “but it’s not the full extent of what I want to do. I like playing other roles. I mean, I went to drama school and did Greek plays. Whereas Woody Allen started out doing stand- up comedy. I’m not interested in just doing comedy stuff. That’s why I like a movie like Now You See Me. It forced me to exercise muscles that you don’t normally get to exercise.”
Where the issue of racial prejudice is concerned, Eisenberg initially shared Hollywood’s enthusiasm for Barack Obama. By now, however, he has a more nuanced view of the President.
“When he was elected, everyone said, ‘Oh the world has changed now!’ Of course nothing changes. I mean, it’s great that he was elected and it’s great for the progress of a country to have a black President, but I don’t know if you can point to substantive differences in the attitudes towards race. Maybe it accelerated the progress a little bit. But no, nothing’s that different, right?”
Now You See Me is in cinemas now.