Background

Ethnicity: Jesse Eisenberg is Ashkenazi Jewish. One of Jesse’s paternal great-grandfathers was named Sam Eisenberg. He was from Poland.

Jesse Adam Eisenberg was born on October 5, 1983, in Queens, New York to Jewish parents Barry Eisenberg and Amy Fishman. He grew up in East Brunswick, New Jersey. His mother, Amy Fishman, worked as a clown at children’s parties and was a choreographer for a Catholic high school. She now teaches cultural sensitivity in hospitals. His father, Barry Eisenberg, drove a taxi cab before running a hospital and then moving on to becoming a college professor, teaching sociology. He has two sisters, Hallie Kate Eisenberg, a former child actress who was once famous as the "Pepsi girl" in a series of commercials. His other sister, Kerri Eisenberg, now Kerry Lea, who also worked as an actress, ran a vegetarianism and animal rights-based children's theatre troupe and is now an independent artist in New York.

Education

Jesse Eisenberg attended a number of schools. He started off by attending East Brunswick Public Schools, then went on to study in Hammarskjold Middle School, Churchill Junior High School, and East Brunswick High School. He then moved to New York to attend the High School of Performing Arts there. He studied anthropology and contemporary architecture at The New School in Greenwich Village and majored in liberal arts with a concentration in Democracy and Cultural Pluralism. He applied and was accepted to New York University but declined enrollment to complete a film role.

Eisenberg had a rough time in school due to anxiety and sensitivity issues. At the age of seven, he appeared in several theatre productions of children’s plays. He started acting to find solace in the discomfort and has often said that he felt at ease on stage, playing different characters. He did children's theater as a way to avoid going to school and landed a role in the film Roger Dodger (2002) in his senior year of high school. Later when he was sixteen, he started writing screenplays and even got into trouble with Woody Allen’s lawyers once.

Career

Jesse Eisenberg began to pursue acting in school. Eisenberg started his acting career as Oliver Twist in the musical Oliver!, a children’s theatre production at the age of 7. As a teen he began to act professionally - he made his Broadway debut as an understudy in 1996, and his first TV appearance came in 1999 on the series Get Real. He then went on to appear in the television film Lightning: Fire from the Sky and in 2002 he won his first film lead role - playing 16-year-old virgin seeking advice from his sleazy uncle in Roger Dodger. While the independent movie wasn’t a commercial success, Jesse received critical acclaim for his performance and won his first award at the San Diego Film Festival. He also appeared in The Emperor's Club - a movie about an inspirational teacher at an elite all boys' school, that truly landed him on the map.

It was two years before Jesse Eisenberg was back on the silver screen with a role in The Village, which he followed up in 2005 with the acclaimed American drama, The Squid and the Whale, which opened to positive reviews from the critics. In 2005, he was also seen in Wes Craven’s Cursed.

In 2007 Eisenberg took on four film roles, The Education of Charlie Banks and the action-adventure thriller The Hunting Party in which he starred opposite Hollywood heavyweight Richard Gere. In November 2007, Eisenberg was cast in the indie comic-drama Holy Rollers alongside his sister, Hallie Eisenberg, who played his fictional sister in the film. He played a young Hasidic Jew who becomes involved in the ecstasy smuggling trade, using his religion as a disguise to deal without suspicion. Filming took place in New York in 2008. During the late 2000s, he also had roles in the independent films Solitary Man, playing college student Daniel, and Camp Hell, a horror film directed by George Van Buskirk.

Jesse's award-winning turn in Roger Dodger hadn’t just caught the eyes of the critics - director Greg Motolla was equally impressed. And after meeting the youngster over dinner, and without an audition, he offered Jesse the lead in his 2009 coming-of-age comedy Adventureland. Playing a teen working at a derelict amusement park over the summer - Kristen Stewart was also cast - he again received praise for his portrayal in the cult movie. His star was on the rise. Filming wrapped in October 2007, and the film had its premiere at the Sundance Film Festival in 2009.

That ascent to fame was further accelerated by Eisenberg's next film role, appearing alongside Woody Harrelson in Zombieland. The comedy was a big commercial success, liked by both critics and fans.

Aged 27, Jesse found himself playing a real-life character, billionaire Mark Zuckerberg, in a fictionalized account of the origins of Facebook - the pair never met prior to filming. The film, which also stars Andrew Garfield and Justin Timberlake, was an instant hit, topping the box office and immediately generating Oscar buzz. This role earned him nominations for the Academy Award, the BAFTA Awards and the Golden Globes in the Best Actor category. He won the Best Actor Award from the National Board of Review of Motion Pictures. According to the film's director, David Fincher, both he and screenwriter Aaron Sorkin knew Eisenberg was the one for the role as soon as they watched his audition tape, despite Eisenberg's own anxieties about his audition.

In 2011, he starred in the box-office animated hit Rio, as the main character Blu, a metropolitan, domesticated male Spix's macaw who learns how to fly. He starred alongside Anne Hathaway, his former co-star (and onscreen sibling) from Get Real, as well as George Lopez, Tracy Morgan, will.i.am, and Jamie Foxx. He featured in one song, "Real in Rio", in the film's soundtrack, which was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Original Song. He also starred alongside Aziz Ansari, Danny McBride, and Nick Swardson in 30 Minutes or Less, a film noir heist-comedy about a pizza delivery man, played by Eisenberg, who is forced to rob a bank, which was released in August 2011. In October 2011, Eisenberg made his playwriting debut in Rattlestick Playwrights Theater's Off-Broadway production of Asuncion, staged at Cherry Lane Theatre. Eisenberg also acted in the play, which was directed by Kip Fagan. The play highlights two overeducated, liberal-minded friends, played by Eisenberg and Justin Bartha, whose assumptions are challenged by their new Filipina roommate, played by Camille Mana.

Jesse starred in the comedy 30 Minutes or Less (2011) followed by Woody Allen's To Rome With Love (2012). In 2013, Jesse played street magician Danny Atlas in the magic caper film Now You See Me alongside James Franco and Mark Ruffalo. He reprised the role in the film’s sequel Now You See Me 2 in 2016. In the next years, he reprised his role as Blu in Rio 2 and premiered his second play, The Revisionist, and starred in Richard Ayoade's drama, The Double (2013), which was shot in 2012.

In 2015, Eisenberg portrayed Rolling Stone journalist David Lipsky in the biographical drama film The End of the Tour, appearing opposite Jason Segel, who portrayed the late author David Foster Wallace. Eisenberg's third play, The Spoils, premiered off-Broadway in The New Group Perishing Square Signature Center Alice Griffin Box Theatre. The play featuring Eisenberg as Ben, also starring Kunal Nayyar, Michael Zegen, Erin Darke, and Annapurna Sriram, was the winner of The Blanche and Irving Laurie Foundation Theatre Visions Fund Award. On September 8, 2015, Eisenberg released his first book, Bream Gives Me Hiccups, a collection of short humor pieces.

Eisenberg then reunited with Woody Allen and Kristen Stewart in Café Society. The film held its world premiere at the Cannes Film Festival on May 11, 2016. In 2016, Jesse also took on the role of supervillain Lex Luthor in Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice (2016), reprising his role in Justice League (2017). Eisenberg is a producer on Jeremy Workman's The World Before Your Feet, which follows a 37-year-old man named Matt Green who has walked over 8,000 miles on the streets of New York City. The film premiered at the 2018 South by Southwest Film Festival.

Eisenberg is creating, writing, and directing a comedy adaptation of Bream Gives Me Hiccups with Jax Media, starring Parker Posey, Victor Rasuk, and Elliott Smith. A pilot was filmed in June. A sequel to the 2009 Zombieland is reportedly in development at Sony, with a logo for Zombieland: Double Tap having debuted at the 2016 CinemaCon. Writers of the first Zombieland, Rhett Reese, and Paul Wernick, are penning the script, with David Callaham on board as a writer with Ruben Fleischer as director.

Eisenberg will play the famous mime Marcel Marceau in Resistance, directed and written by Jonathan Jakubowicz. It will focus on Marceau's part in the French resistance during World War II. He will also join Pierce Brosnan and Vanessa Redgrave in a film based on the book The Wreck of Medusa about the painting The Raft of the Medusa as artist Théodore Géricault. Alongside Alexander Skarsgard, Eisenberg will star as a high-frequency trader in Kim Nguyen's tech drama The Hummingbird Project. Eisenberg joined Riley Stearns's dark action-comedy The Art of Self-Defense alongside Imogen Poots and Alessandro Nivola. Principal photography began in Louisville, Kentucky, on September 11, 2017.

Eisenberg is set to write, direct, and star in Bad Robot's comedy The Market about a "recently widowed Harold Katzman who moves to Pittsburgh to live with his adult son, Stan (Eisenberg). Both men simultaneously lose their jobs due to the changing American economy and are thrust into an unforgiving job market." He will executive produce with J.J. Abrams and Ben Stephenson.

Eisenberg's new play Happy Talk had its world premiere in 2019, with production by The New Group, marking his second collaboration with the company. The production is about "a suburban woman's efforts to take care of her family while starring in a community-theater production of South Pacific". Originally titled Yea, Sister, the show was directed by Scott Elliott.

Achievements

• Jesse Eisenberg has received numerous accolades and nominations throughout his acting career. He is best known for playing Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg in The Social Network (2010), for which he received BAFTA Award, Golden Globe, and Academy Award nominations in the Best Actor category. Jesse Eisenberg has won appraisal from audiences and critics alike for portraying his roles with passion. Over the course of his career, he has won several awards including the Boston Society of film Critics Award and National Society of Film Critics Award.

Works

More photos

• book

  • Bream Gives Me Hiccups

    (United by Eisenberg’s gift for humor and character, and g...)

    2015

• movie

  • Now You See Me

    (Four talented magicians mesmerize an international audien...)

    2013
  • Roger Dodger

    (After cynical New York advertising copywriter Roger Swans...)

    2002
  • Louder Than Bombs

    (Louder Than Bombs explores the death of a famous photogra...)

    2015
  • The End Of The Tour

    (A funny and touching exploration of fame, success, and fr...)

    2015
  • Adventureland

    (A comedy set in the summer of 1987 and centered around a ...)

    2009
  • Zombieland

    (Nerdy college student Columbus (Jessie Eisenberg) has and...)

    2009
  • Why Stop Now?

    (Why Stop Now? tells the bittersweet story of Eli Smith (E...)

    2012
  • Café Society

    (Woody Allen's Café Society follows Bobby (Jesse Eisenberg...)

    2016
  • Now You See Me 2

    (The Four Horsemen return for a second mind-bending advent...)

    2016
  • Rio 2

    (Take a walk on the wild side with Anne Hathaway, Jesse Ei...)

    2014
  • Batman v Superman: Dawn Of Justice

    (From director Zack Snyder comes "Batman v Superman: Dawn ...)

    2016
  • American Ultra

    (Jesse Eisenberg and Kristen Stewart star in this explosiv...)

    2015
  • The Squid and the Whale

    (In his third feature, director Noah Baumbach scores a tri...)

    2005
  • Solitary Man

    (A car magnate (Michael Douglas of Wall Street) watches hi...)

    2009
  • 30 Minutes Or Less

    (In 30 Minutes or Less, a small town pizza delivery guy is...)

    2011
  • Justice League

    (Batman, Wonder Woman and an all-star team of superheroes ...)

    2017
  • To Rome With Love

    (Woody Allen plays a father meting his daughter's Italian ...)

    2012
  • Hunting Party

    (A young journalist, a seasoned cameraman and a discredite...)

    2007
  • One Day Like Rain |

    (A 17-year-old girl devises a metaphysical experiment desi...)

    2007
  • Camp Hell

    (Deep dark secrets are exposed about Camp Hope as children...)

    2010
  • The Living Wake

    (A dark comedy which chronicles the final day in the life ...)

    2007
  • The Hummingbird Project

    (In the billion-dollar game of High Frequency Trading, win...)

    2018
  • The Double

    (Simon is a timid man, scratching out an isolated existenc...)

    2013
  • Cursed

    (Jesse Eisenberg and Christina Ricci go werewolf hunting i...)

    2005
  • The Social Network

    (A story about the founders of the social-networking websi...)

    2010
  • The Village

    (Thrilling tale of an isolated town confronting an unknown...)

    2004
  • The Emperor's Club

    (A professor (Kevin Kline) clashes with a senator's troubl...)

    2002
  • Rio

    (Rio is an animated feature from the makers of the Ice Age...)

    2010
  • The Education of Charlie Banks

    (The high school bully is back.)

    2007

Religion

Eisenberg is Jewish but non-religious.

Politics

Eisenberg endorsed Obama in the 2012 election. Eisenberg spoke at a rally in support of Democratic Illinois gubernatorial candidate Daniel Biss on March 10, 2018, as well as at a meet and greet hosted by Reclaim Chicago and University of Chicago Student Action the day before, alongside State Representative Will Guzzardi. He filmed two videos for the campaign, one for Biss's Facebook account and one for the Biss For Illinois YouTube platform.

Views

Eisenberg is fond of cats and has been involved in fostering animals. He has been associated with Farm Sanctuary and has presented at several of their galas. In 2015 he stated, "I'm like 95% vegetarian."

In September 2015, Eisenberg announced that starting November, he would match donations made to Middle Way House, a domestic violence shelter in Bloomington, Indiana, up to $100,000 until April 3, 2016. All contributions made went towards the organization's mortgage payment fund that was matched by a committee, led by Eisenberg. Eisenberg is also a cast member with Theater of War, a performing arts non-profit that presents readings of Sophocles's Ajax and Philoctetes to military and civilian communities across the United States and Europe.

On September 12, 2016, Eisenberg, as well as Cate Blanchett, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Peter Capaldi, Douglas Booth, Neil Gaiman, Keira Knightley, Juliet Stevenson, Kit Harington, and Stanley Tucci, featured in a video from the United Nations' refugee agency UNHCR to help raise awareness about the global refugee crisis. The video, titled "What They Took With Them", has the actors reading a poem, written by Jenifer Toksvig and inspired by primary accounts of refugees, and is part of UNHCR's #WithRefugees campaign, which also includes a petition to governments to expand asylum to provide further shelter, integrating job opportunities, and education.

Quotations: "I have a lot of personal anxieties. And I've realized that playing a character stuck in a life-or-death situation like this allows me to release those anxieties in a very healthful, cathartic way."

"There's something strange about theater. My characters consistently demonize elitism, but of course, it's taking place in a theater where only so many people can see it. I've been in silly popcorn movies - the kind of thing that as an actor you might feel embarrassed about - but those movies reach many more people. In a play, you're basically performing for rich people."

"I always think that acting in the plays I've written is like the second most terrifying thing in the world, and the first most terrifying thing in the world is sitting at home and not doing it. As nerve-wracking as it is, I would feel worse not doing it."

Personality

Eisenberg has obsessive-compulsive disorder and is open about it. He said of his condition: "I touch the tips of my fingers in a weird way; I don't step on cracks; if I'm going onto a new surface - be it carpet to concrete, or concrete to wood, or wood to concrete, any new surface - I have to make sure all parts of my feet touch the ground equally before I touch that new thing. So I'll often hesitate before walking into a new room." He has also spoken about going to therapy to manage his anxieties - OCD, separation anxiety, social anxiety - and depression, the latter of which he struggled with a lot when he was younger, as well as how acting helped him better cope.

In 2007, Eisenberg started an online wordplay website with his cousin, a social design evangelist at Facebook, called OneUpMe. They re-launched the site in 2010, instead exclusively formatted for Facebook users. Despite his iconic portrayal of Facebook co-founder, Mark Zuckerberg, in the 2010 movie The Social Network, Eisenberg himself does not have a Facebook account.

Jesse doesn’t follow fashion and describes his personal style as, “every day is laundry day.” Being recognized out in public makes Eisenberg uncomfortable.

Physical Characteristics: Eisenberg has a height of 5 ft 9 in or 175 cm, and a weight of 72 kg or 159 pounds. He also has dark brown curly hair and blue eyes.

Interests

• playing drums

• Politicians

  Daniel Biss, Barack Obama

• Writers

  Making Nice by Matt Sumell, So You've Been Publicly Shamed by Jon Ronson, Illustrado by Miguel Syjuco, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain

• Sport & Clubs

  Indy Thunder, Indiana Pacers, basketball, baseball

• Athletes

  Darnell Booker

• Music & Bands

  Wu-Tang Clan, William Finn, Ween, Corn Mo, A R Rahman, 38 Special, Steve Reich, Chopin

Connections

Jesse Eisenberg and Anna Strout (the daughter of Middle Way executive director Toby Strout) first met during the shooting of The Emperor’s Club in 2002 and started dating. After over a decade, the two called it quits. Eisenberg started dating his The Double co-star Mia Wasikowska in 2013. They split in 2015. After splitting from Mia, he once again started dating Anna Strout and they married in 2017. The couple's son was born in April 2017.

Father:

Barry Eisenberg

Barry is Jewish and brought up his family in the Jewish way. At first, he worked as a taxi-cab driver before he owned and worked at his own hospital. Later, Barry taught in a college as a Professor of Sociology.

Mother:

Amy (Fishman) Eisenberg

For twenty years, Amy Eisenberg nee Fishman was a professional clown named Bonabini. Back in the 1980s and 1990s, she performed at children’s birthday parties in their New Brunswick hometown. Amy was also a choreographer for a Catholic High School while she was Bonabini. All of these just go to show how ordinary Jesse’s background was.

In fact, Jesse says his mother’s former profession had a big impact on his acting career. When Amy was a clown, she would wake up early and begin to warm up her voice and tune her guitar; rehearsing diligently for her performances. It taught Jesse that one could take a thing seemingly little as that seriously. Isn’t it funny that Jesse got his career discipline form Bonabini!

Amy Eisenberg now teaches cross-cultural sensitivity in hospitals.

Spouse:

Anna Strout

Sister:

Kerry (Eisenberg) Lea

Kerrу Lea started a children’s theatre troupe that allows kids to use their passion for compassion to change the world.

Sister:

Hallie Kate Eisenberg

Hallie Eisenberg is a former child actress who was once famous as the "Pepsi girl" in a series of commercials.

ex-girlfriend:

Mia Wasikowska

colleague:

Anne Hathaway

colleague:

Emma Stone