I think there are probably a lot of actors like me who I think probably struggle to feel comfortable in their own lives, and acting in some ways provides a safe context for them to live out emotions that they possibly repress or live out experiences that they are not afforded by virtue of circumstance.

Jesse Eisenberg

Categorized in : Thinking Struggle Acting

Every character I play has to be the hero of his own story, the way we're all heroes of our own lives.

Jesse Eisenberg

hero play character

I have one female fan. But she lives with me. I'm not aware of any others.

Jesse Eisenberg

female fans

No compliment is ever sufficient and every insult, of course, is true.

Jesse Eisenberg

insult courses compliment

It's really hard to copy another actor and be successful. In fact, that's usually the reason people are not good, because they're copying something they've seen, but, for some reason with their face and their body, it doesn't work.

Jesse Eisenberg

copying successful people

Society will decide after the technology is created what we will and won't accept.

Jesse Eisenberg

accepting technology

The happiest moments for me, creatively, are doing readings of a play around a table where there's no audience.

Jesse Eisenberg

reading tables play

The more people say nice things about me, the more I feel it's false.

Jesse Eisenberg

nice-things nice people

I'm not into music - the only music I like is musical theater, but I have every Ween album.

Jesse Eisenberg

albums theater musical

The only way to be turned off to being famous is to be famous. And I only have like a tiny, tiny bit of that, and I'm already disgusted by it. But I realize that the only way to be disgusted by fame is to be famous, because otherwise it looks amazing. Then people stop you on the street, and it's like the most annoying thing in the world. The first time it happened it's great, and then the second time you have to shake somebody's hand.

Jesse Eisenberg

hands people looks

I give credence to the worst things somebody writes about me, and if somebody writes something nice, I think they're wrong or false or lying or joking.

Jesse Eisenberg

nice writing lying

I feel things can always be funny, but that's probably because I have some kind of leftover childhood need to make people laugh. For somebody like me, that's the thing you excel at.

Jesse Eisenberg

childhood laughing people

I cried every day of first grade. In class. Which meant I ended up getting comfortable emoting in a place where it wasn't the norm.

Jesse Eisenberg

grades class firsts

My mom always said that she didn't wear a red nose and big shoes because that's the reason people are scared of clowns. My dad is a sociology teacher, so he probably figured that out with her. Those are the things that are exaggerated, that don't give off the signals of humans. You know, if you draw a picture of a circle and ask somebody to feel empathy with the circle, they won't. But if you draw literally two, three dots inside the circle, like two eyes and a nose, you immediately feel empathy.

Jesse Eisenberg

dad mom teacher

People think, 'You're an actor, you can afford clothes,' but I just try to take the clothes from the movie, which makes the selecting of film projects that much more difficult, because you try to play characters that might wear something you'd want to wear.

Jesse Eisenberg

clothes character thinking

I don't watch the movies I'm in - ever. Sometimes I keep pictures, but that's it. I used to watch my movies, because I didn't want to be rude to the people making them, but I stopped a few years ago. I think it's pretty common among actors. It's like listening to your own voice, but multiplied by a million.

Jesse Eisenberg

voice years thinking

Often times, being in a popular thing means that you have to compromise your own acting.

Jesse Eisenberg

compromise acting mean

When cellphones came out, my girlfriend refused to get one for five years, because she thought it would turn her into somebody who couldn't connect with other people - and, of course, she got a cellphone.

Jesse Eisenberg

girlfriend people years

I find it very difficult to do normal things without getting approached.

Jesse Eisenberg

normal-things difficult normal

I don't attribute an actor's great success to their own individual performance when it's something as collaborative as a movie.

Jesse Eisenberg

great-success individual actors

I think I'm an abstinence symbol. If I take my shirt off, people will not have babies.

Jesse Eisenberg

baby people thinking