A recent interview with Huffington Post gives some added insight to actor Jesse Eisenberg of The Social Network fame, and his penchant for playing the most intense and unique of characters. After starring in the Facebook drama as founder Mark Zuckerberg, Eisenberg explained that he is “definitely attracted to characters who have that type of intensity – specific to what it is they’re doing, and also a real passion about something.”
Hence the twenty-eight year old New York native’s attachment to Holy Rollers, a limited release that made its initial debut last year. A movie from director Kevin Asch that follows Eisenberg as an Orthodox Jew who is lured into becoming an Ecstasy dealer. “When you’re playing a role you want to latch on to something, an emotion, an ambition, it just makes the experience of performing that much more… rich.”
Straight forward about the challenges and whether The Social Network took his career on “a whole new recognition trajectory at a very early stage in his career,” Eisenberg said “no.” Adding that “there’s no way to kind of create a specific trajectory as an actor, because you’re being hired. A lot of why that character was so good had to do with more than just me. I actually feel that I’ve been as good or better in other roles that people haven’t seen, or haven’t had the exposure, or in a play or something. I don’t attribute an actor’s great success to their own individual performance, when it’s something as collaborative as a movie.” Of course sky rocketing into the spotlight has its down side for Eisenberg. whose interested in more than acting. “I don’t want to complain, because there are amazing perks, but… I’m a writer as well, and I like to go on the subway and just eavesdrop on people’s conversations. I used to sit outside a classroom of girls and when they would come out on their break, I used to write down everything they said, and that’s more difficult for me now. People take pictures on their ipods, I can’t blend in as easily, and that’s a real annoyance.”
There are some things that do remain the same for the actor since his break out role in The Social Network. “Nothing’s changed. I live in the same apartment, with the same life – all pretty typical for an actor. Lots of attention comes your way, then the next year it might not. So you have to recognise the perks for what they are, which are by-products, and instead concentrate on the process, which is the reward itself.”
