Jesse Eisenberg on His New Films, Old Insecurities and Nice Guy David Fincher

After spending all that time on a soundstage, do you ever sense -- or act on -- an impulse to revert to smaller films? I'm thinking of things like Holy Rollers at this point.

The size, for me, is really irrelevant. When I first read Holy Rollers I assumed it was a big-budget movie. The first draft had more thriller elements. I just assumed it was
a bigger movie. The movie I just finished was about Facebook, and it was a character movie, and I didn't have any idea about the size of it. It turned into kind of a bigger production. The size is never really relevant to me; I just want to do the project for what it is. I was surprised they were able to make Holy Rollers at the level that they made it. It was the smallest-budget movie I've gotten to do. But nothing felt compromised: The shoot was quicker, but nothing ever felt compromised. I think actors feel it less than other departments on set.

I think there's sometimes a misconception that characters in a smaller movie are somehow more rich. I think that's kind of ridiculous. The movie I did last year was kind of a zombie comedy where the characters are -- at least to me, from reading the script -- as rich as any quality independent movie. There's kind of a misconception that independent movies have better characters. I don't think that's the case across the board.

Were you familiar with Holy Rollers' true story going into it?

No, I'd never heard of it. I'd always been fascinated with Hasidic Jews because I'd lived so close to them. But no. Were you?

No. I was shocked. What was your learning curve on that one? What did you look into, what did you study?

Actually, the one advantage to waiting for the money -- and it was a year and a half for this one after I signed on -- is that you kind of get a little more time to prepare. So I would go into Borough Park, Crown Heights, Williamsburg -- the three predominantly Hasidic areas of New York -- to meet people and to research. I spent a lot of time with kids, sometimes telling them what I was doing, but most often not. It just raised some strange questions. People were open oftentimes to discussing their lives. When I first read the script I couldn't tell if this was a character who should even be played by an actor. I thought he should played by a real Hasidic Jew. it'd be more interesting that way. That was the first thing I pitched to the people making the movie: I shouldn't be playing this in the first place.

But what I found was that the more time I spent with these kids was that they were very similar to me. Their accents were very infrequently hard to understand. Most of the time they sounded exactly like me -- like a New York kid, with a bit of a Brooklyn [accent]. We went to these dialect coaches, and for them it was more about getting a sense of the Brooklyn accent than the Yiddish accent. So I realized it would be appropriate to play. And then when my friend Justin [Bartha] signed on to it, we kind of had to create our own sect because we were hiring actors who could work for one day. It was a New York movie; they were New York actors. You couldn't ask them to grow a beard for 10 years. So we created our own sect that deviates a little bit from what would actually be, just to try to make it consistent. But it as very interesting to learn about -- like actors get to learn kung-fu.

You know, you spoke with Movieline last year at Comic-Con, and you adopted a self-effacement that seemed to invoke your limitations. You've done the same thing here, but I get the sense you think your limitations bring something extra.

I don't know. I'm hoping the Zoloft will take care of that. I think there's an advantage to knowing what you can do and staying in a safety zone. The thing about acting in movies is that it's oftentimes a very competitive and tenuous job. There's comfort to having a safety zone because you can work consistently. My friend Justin is a good example of that. We talk about it all the time. He's my closest actor friend, he has a much different sense of things; he's always trying to play something new. He's playing a part now, and he said, "I always wanted to play this guy, because I pictured him in my head..." And he had this goal of playing a certain role. That's never, ever occurred to me. I'm embarrassed every time I get cast in a movie because I feel like I'm just going to screw it up -- even though I want to be in in it in the first place. As soon as I'm cast, I think, "Now I'm going to ruin it." It's not a healthy attitude to have, and maybe it's been limiting in some ways. But I'm sure that would go with me [in] every job I did.

But that could happen at any job. I mean, I'm a writer; it hits me all the time.

And I'm sure you meet colleagues of yours who feel very confident! Who go home and... I don't know. They work on something. "I'm going to write this book." Like Nabokov. Right? It must be like that in every industry, right?

Absolutely. But let's go back to The Social Network, in which you're working with a guy like David Fincher, who is notorious for chewing up and spitting out vulnerable actors. How do you approach that -- knowing what you know about yourself and your apprehensions?

I guess I didn't know that about him. He didn't fire anybody from the movie or anything. I made an audition tape for him, and then I met with him in California. I got the sense immediately that he was happy with me and the tape I made. It wasn't just a little tape; it was 30 pages of dialogue or something. There were a lot of scenes from the movie. I guess I felt assurance from the director right off the bat that I was right for it. And also, I have a certain amount of confidence when I'm there. I often feel after a scene is done, "That didn't go as well as it could have," and I've been learning that everyone feels that way. You just have to realize that it's OK. And I guess like anything else, the more you do something -- and it's going well, and you're not forced out of it -- the more confidence you get just by virtue of having more practice.

But I don't know. Acting is a weird, kind of alienating job because you're in an isolated place. Even if you're working with a lot of other people, you're kind of alienated. Actors say that a lot, and I kind of find that to be true. You're in a place where you're working [from] your own imagination. If judged objectively, then that can be kind of off-putting.

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