Jesse Eisenberg

Jesse Eisenberg is an American actor, playwright, and author born on October 5, 1983, in Queens, New York. He grew up in East Brunswick, New Jersey, and began performing as a child. His film debut came in the 2002 independent comedy-drama film Roger Dodger, directed by Dylan Kidd, in which he played Nick, a teenager drawn into a troubling day with his manipulative uncle, Roger, played by Campbell Scott. He subsequently appeared in The Squid and the Whale (2005), Noah Baumbach’s semi-autobiographical drama about a divorcing Brooklyn family. Eisenberg played Walt, the elder son of Jeff Daniels’s Bernard Berkman, opposite Owen Kline.

His breakthrough arrived with David Fincher’s The Social Network (2010), written by Aaron Sorkin. Eisenberg portrayed Facebook co-founder Mark Zuckerberg during the company’s early years and its legal disputes, including claims brought by the Winklevoss twins and Eduardo Saverin. The performance earned him Academy Award, BAFTA, Golden Globe, and Screen Actors Guild nominations for Best Actor. He also played Columbus in Zombieland (2009), Ruben Fleischer’s zombie comedy, returning for Zombieland: Double Tap in 2019. In Adventureland (2009), Greg Mottola’s amusement-park coming-of-age film, he played James Brennan opposite Kristen Stewart. His other notable films include Holy Rollers (2010), 30 Minutes or Less (2011), Now You See Me (2013), and its 2016 sequel, in which he played magician J. Daniel Atlas, and Rio (2011), where he voiced Blu, a domesticated blue macaw.

Eisenberg portrayed journalist David Lipsky in The End of the Tour (2015), which dramatizes Lipsky’s 1996 interview trip with novelist David Foster Wallace, played by Jason Segel. That year he became Lex Luthor in Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, directed by Zack Snyder, and reprised the role in Justice League (2017). His stage work includes writing and starring in Asuncion, first produced off-Broadway in 2011, and writing The Spoils, which opened off-Broadway in 2015. He appeared in the Broadway run of The Spoils as Ben, a role written for him.

As a writer, Eisenberg published Bream Gives Me Hiccups in 2012, a collection containing stories and a play. His later collection, Happy Talk, appeared in 2019. He wrote and directed When You Finish Saving the World, adapted from his 2020 Audible original and released as a film in 2022. Julianne Moore and Finn Wolfhard starred as a mother and son whose strained relationship is central to the story. Eisenberg also played Ralphie in the 2023 Manodrome, directed by John Trengove.