JESSE EISENBERG
Vivarium star JESSE EISENBERG on how he tackled his standout roles
Role-by-role with Hollywood’s fastest talker.
IT WOULD HAVE been all too easy for Jesse Eisenberg to get typecast as the über-smart, über-neurotic, fast-talking nerdy guy. Not least because Jesse Eisenberg himself is an über-smart, über-neurotic, fast-talking nerdy guy. And that’s a well the 36-year-old actor has returned to on occasion. But he’s also (über-) smart enough to try to break out of any envelope in which Hollywood might try to seal him, taking on roles in indies and blockbusters alike that stretch him as an actor. With this month’s Vivarium marking one such role, we caught up with him on the phone and asked him to talk us through seven of his most memorable characters.
NICK ROGER DODGER (2002)
A teenager who asks his playboy uncle to help him lose his virginity, in what was Eisenberg’s first movie. “That was the best and worst possible first experience. It was unbelievable in every way, but it made me feel like this was going to be the norm.
I was pretty naive. I didn’t understand when I was on camera until the other actor said, ‘You did a great job.’ And then I became more self-conscious. But in a way, being naive was probably to my advantage. It was a sweet, innocent character.”
WALT BERKMAN THE SQUID AND THE WHALE (2005)
A bitter, disenfranchised teenager, the kind who glibly dumps his girlfriend or claims to have written Pink Floyd’s ‘Hey You’.
“It took a long time to figure out the role, because I had not played a character that had a kind of nastiness to them before. By virtue of how I appeared, or my general personality, I didn’t get roles that had a kind of edginess to them at the time. But once you lock into it, it flows more naturally. It set me off on a desire to play characters that have sharper edges.”
MARK ZUCKERBERG THE SOCIAL NETWORK (2010)
A socially awkward university student who invents Facebook, changes the world and later becomes a hugely controversial, often reviled, public figure.
“Every time an actor is playing a role that an audience may find despicable, that actor is still likely sympathising with the character in some way. That’s just the nature of the job. The wrong thing to do in a full-length feature is a kind of impression. If it’s not a comedy sketch, the most important thing to do is give the character a real presence.”
COLUMBUS ZOMBIELAND (2009) ZOMBIELAND: DOUBLE TAP (2019)
A slacker who finds a way to stay alive, and thrive, in the middle of a zombie apocalypse.
“We were on set the second day of the first movie. And it was a scene where my character was mourning the loss of a nextdoor neighbour or something. It was a really sad scene, and it was cut out. But I walked back to the monitors and Rhett Reese, one of the writers, was crying. But that was heartening because it confirmed to me that this was a very personal movie wrapped up in this package. For Rhett, that was a character he based on himself. And that gave me licence to have a personal connection to it.”
LEX LUTHOR BATMAN VS SUPERMAN: DAWN OF JUSTICE (2016) JUSTICE LEAGUE (2017)
A megalomaniacal multimillionaire who is so affronted by the existence of Superman that he tries to bring him down.
“It sounds strange to discuss it in these terms, but I tried to think about everybody in my life who I felt was unfairly in
power, who were given what felt like otherworldly gifts through no effort. That’s what that character is dealing with. Chris Terrio wrote the script with the utmost thoughtfulness and sophistication. The characters have these amazing allusions to Greek mythology and to French philosophy. But that’s not necessarily what the trailers are leading with.”
CASEY DAVIES THE ART OF SELF-DEFENSE (2019)
A reclusive accountant who becomes emboldened after enrolling in a selfdefence class.
“I loved playing that role more than anything else I’ve ever done. This required an acting style that was completely unusual, totally eccentric, bizarrely literal, and unnatural. But it required the same emotional depths I like. Riley [Stearns], the director, sent me the script and I hated the first few pages because I thought, ‘This is just a clichéd, put-upon, hapless protagonist.’ But I thought the dialogue was so funny so I kept reading. I’m glad I did, because he was subverting that trope in such a clever way, using that motif to make a satire on masculinity.”
TOM VIVARIUM (2020)
A gardener who finds himself, along with his girlfriend, trapped in a suburban house from which there’s no escape.
“This is a character I don’t really play that frequently, in terms of his place in the story. He’s the masculine presence, he’s un-neurotic. It doesn’t offer me the kind of eccentricity that I tend to be more attracted to, but I really liked doing it in this context, because I loved the story. The movie is so abstracted and surreal, but it requires a style of acting that is as natural as a kitchen-sink drama. If the acting was also full of forced eccentricities, it would make the movie impenetrable.”
VIVARIUM IS OUT NOW ON DVD, BLU-RAY AND DIGITAL