June 2011
9 posts
5 tags
“I told them I wanted to play the part in Zombieland with payos because I thought...”
– Jesse Eisenberg (via lucy-vanpelt)
6 tags
“Oh—in terms of like Jewish characters? I don’t think of—the first thing I...”
– Jesse Eisenberg (via lucy-vanpelt)
2 tags
2 tags
INTERVIEWER: How do you feel, always being tapped for these nervous, fidgety roles?
JESSE EISENBERG: Well, it’s great because if you don’t have inner conflict, then it’s not an interesting character to play. It’s more interesting to me if the character feels conflicted, which may appear as discomfort or anger or may appear as sadness, so in this respect, I don’t mind being tapped for that because that’s what makes those characters interesting to me.
INTERVIEWER: You also come off as smart —another nerdy quality.
JESSE EISENBERG: My father is a professor and my mother is also a teacher and my girlfriend and friends are teachers so I suppose I come from an articulate background and that’s what people see. I come from a background where it was important to be articulate and thoughtful.
2 tags
INTERVIEWER: What’s a role you’d want to play that’s unlike anything you’ve done?
JESSE EISENBERG: I write plays. When I write a play, I write for myself and it’s a role I want to play but as an actor being hired by others, I’ve gotten to play much more interesting people and much more dimensional characters than I ever expected to play. I never thought I’d be in a movie like Adventureland, which is like a more traditional romantic movie. I was raised to not think of myself as a sexual being so to be in that surprised me. I feel very fortunate to have been in things even though I was not raised to be sexual. Like an eunuch almost. I was supposed to get circumcised but he castrated me. They cut too much off, the whole thing really.
4 tags
Interviewer: How active are you on social media? I saw you have a Facebook page …
Jesse: I don’t have a Facebook page.
Interviewer: Well, someone does with your picture and name and 300 friends.
Jesse: I only have 300 friends? [Whispers] What the hell.
4 tags
Jesse Eisenberg: We occasionally go there or we go to a temple in New York called CBST (Congregation Beit Simchat Torah), which is a lesbian/gay/bisexual/transgender temple.
Interviewer: Why there?
Jesse Eisenberg: It’s really the most amazing thing: I mean they hold the holidays at the Javitz Center because 20,000 people come. It’s really an incredible place, and it’s run by this incredible woman now named Rabbi Sharon Kleinbaum. Her sermons are just so remarkable, regardless of how religious you are or in the case of that temple, what your sexual orientation is. She has the most inspiring speeches.
4 tags
4 tags
INTERVIEWER: (In Holy Rollers) This is no detriment to your acting, I was reminded of Mark Zuckerberg in some way because you're talking about two people who are very much in a community who kind of then--who involve themselves in a wider community and find themselves very good at it.
JESSE: That's right. They both kind of end up in a nightclub by accident. That's exactly right. Their paths there are so different, but they're both kind of brought into the community and both attracted to it and disgusted by it. In the case of Holly Rollers, the character I play, Sam, is very attracted to you know, what he sees as a very alluring world of money and rollex watches and girls, but not drugs. And in the same way, in The Social Network, Mark is attracted to the same thing: girls and fancy things but for Mark it's never about money that he's attracted to; he's attracted to feeling a sense of belonging.
