Jesse Eisenberg Quotes & Sayings

When you take on a role you try to do as much as possible beforehand to get your mind into it. Just to prepare because it's a daunting prospect to go six months or whatever. — Jesse Eisenberg

Look, I don't have a Facebook page because I have little interest in hearing myself talk about myself any further than I already do in interviews or putting any more about myself online than there already is. But if I wasn't in this position, I'm sure I would use it every day. — Jesse Eisenberg

Lies are for adults who are sad in their lives. — Jesse Eisenberg

I tend to be pessimistic about everything: If things seem to be going good, I'm worried that it's going to end; if things are bad, then I'm worried that it's going to be permanent. It's not a very comfortable attitude to have all the time. — Jesse Eisenberg

I always thought Woody Harrelson is quite a persuasive guy. He's the kind of guy who can call you up in the middle of the night and tell you, 'Let's all go get a donut!' And you're thinking, 'It's the middle of the night,' but somehow you still get up and go get a donut. — Jesse Eisenberg

I feel like when I was 13 and I had to go to bar mitzvahs every weekend. This is the same feeling. You have to put on a suit every weekend to go meet with a bunch of Jews. — Jesse Eisenberg

The frustrating part of being a movie actor is waiting in your trailer to do two takes of a scene you've prepared for two months. — Jesse Eisenberg

Devils don't come from hell beneath us, they come from the sky. — Jesse Eisenberg

I'm no good at really anything that involves motor skills. — Jesse Eisenberg

If God is all-powerful, He cannot be all good. And if He is all good, then He cannot be all-powerful. And neither can you be. — Jesse Eisenberg

Everybody feels like they need a photograph because we're in a generation where, if you don't document it, it didn't occur. So you've got to stop and take a picture with everybody. — Jesse Eisenberg

I think I prioritize other people's opinions of me very highly, which is not necessarily a good thing - it's a thing that causes a lot of anxiety. — Jesse Eisenberg

I prefer playing characters that are going through turmoil. Most movie characters are just in service to the story. — Jesse Eisenberg

As an actor, if I show up late somewhere or I say something that's eccentric, it's totally acceptable - not only that, it's lauded in some perverse way. — Jesse Eisenberg

It's a struggle for me to watch things I've been in because I'm just distracted and self-critical. — Jesse Eisenberg

When you do a play, you have the kind of nightly feeling of accomplishment. But you also have the daily dread of the doing it every night. And because you're doing the whole thing every day, it's like climbing up the mountain every single night. With a movie it's like climbing the mountain very slowly, over months of filming. — Jesse Eisenberg

When you're acting in a movie, you never consider the reception of it. It's impossible to predict how something will be received. Even if you think it's the greatest thing in the world, other people might not like it. Or agree with it. — Jesse Eisenberg

I don't watch the movies I've been in. I try to stay as little aware of the final product as possible, because my job doesn't really change. — Jesse Eisenberg

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

I don't go to movies, I don't own a television, I don't buy magazines and I try not to receive mail, so I'm not really aware of popular culture. — Jesse Eisenberg

I live in New York City, so there's so much stimulation when you walk outside, it does not require a television in the home. — Jesse Eisenberg

The movies that are really big, at least in my experience, oftentimes don't have characters that I feel as personally connected to. — Jesse Eisenberg

And I'm sure after Facebook it will be the little cameras that we have implanted into the palms of our hands and we'll be debating whether we should get them, and then we'll all get them. — Jesse Eisenberg

The joy of acting for me is to be able to experience emotions in a safe environment. You can't scream and cry in the street because everybody will look. If you do it on a movie set, you get applauded. — Jesse Eisenberg

I think there's nothing more wonderful than using fiction to reflect real-world cultural ideas. — Jesse Eisenberg

I have a job that requires me to be in the public eye in the way that makes me extra careful about sharing information. — Jesse Eisenberg

It's very hard to be a playwright because it's very competitive. — Jesse Eisenberg

I did children's theater when I was younger, and then when I was about 14 I started doing theater in New York City. — Jesse Eisenberg

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

I write plays, and I have a musical that's starting to get produced now. That's what I would love to do, but it's so hard. The only reason people are reading my plays and musicals is because I'm in movies. — Jesse Eisenberg

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

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

Every relationship has a kind of pattern, I guess, and maybe the pattern is more important than the stuff that makes up the pattern. — Jesse Eisenberg

I tend to prefer the smaller movies because they shoot more efficiently and so you're are able to maintain that momentum of the character a little more easily. — Jesse Eisenberg

When playing a role, I would feel more comfortable, as you're given a prescribed way of behaving. So, both Facebook and theatre provide contrived settings that provide the illusion of social interaction. — Jesse Eisenberg

I think it's a room full of insecure actors, which is ultimately very comforting. — Jesse Eisenberg

Working in the arts, you see people who come from terrible circumstances and who, for whatever reason, have incredible talent. But of course, with that great talent comes some guilt because, if you come from circumstances that don't encourage it, it can be really confusing. — Jesse Eisenberg

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

As an actor, you have to be open to doing things where you look stupid, to be experimental. — Jesse Eisenberg

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

I've never had tastes of people my own age. All of my friends when I was 15 were in their 40s. I'm not actually mature, just very self-conscious around people my own age because I feel like I'm supposed to act the same way they act and I don't know how. — Jesse Eisenberg

People ask me what my hobbies are in interviews, and I always say biking. But all I bike for is to get to rehearsal more quickly. — Jesse Eisenberg

To criticize Facebook is to criticize the telephone. — Jesse Eisenberg

I had great difficulty in school interacting with others, and I took refuge in the contrived setting of play acting, which is what I still do. — Jesse Eisenberg

You can tell when you watch a movie, usually, what the actors' experience was on the movie, because even the smallest of roles were interesting. — Jesse Eisenberg

If you're acting, then there's a prescribed way to behave; whereas in life, there's no prescribed way. So acting feels like a comfortable way to get through the day. — Jesse Eisenberg

No one should be offended - that's not my style. — Jesse Eisenberg

I don't understand capri pants. They seem like neither here nor there. — Jesse Eisenberg

I think it's my nature to - every time I hear about an award or a nomination, it makes me realize how much I must've been losing before, because I was not aware that every major city had these critics' awards. — Jesse Eisenberg

I guess the more serious you play something, if the context is funny, then it will be funny and it doesn't really require you to be necessarily, explicitly humorous, or silly. — Jesse Eisenberg

In acting class, you're trained to express yourself as much as you can. — Jesse Eisenberg

A lot of times the character's experience is not in accordance with the tone of the movie and it's not really my job to account for the tone of the movie. That's the director's job. — Jesse Eisenberg

I thought it must have been scary to be an Apatosaurus because he just wanted to be nice but there was probably a lot of pressure to be mean because he was a dinosaur. — Jesse Eisenberg

Acting is a weird profession. It's very disquieting, and at the time it just made me so confused. It's only when you step away from a movie for several weeks or months that you start to put things in perspective. — Jesse Eisenberg

When you are in a live-action movie, you have so many more options to express yourself. You can use your body and your gestures and facial expressions. When you are doing an animated movie, you really only have your voice. — Jesse Eisenberg

In New York, everybody is their own celebrity, so they're not so interested in other people. — Jesse Eisenberg

I find people who want to help other people to be the most interesting. I come from a family of teachers, and my friends are teachers, often times in very difficult school situations. — Jesse Eisenberg

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

I grew up in a secular suburban Jewish household where we only observed the religion on very specific times like a funeral or a Bar Mitzvah. — Jesse Eisenberg

Poor people are gross and they 'smell bad — Jesse Eisenberg

I often think if you have time to sit around the house feeling bad for yourself, you have time to tutor a child. I'm guilty of that exact thing. I will spend more time sitting around feeling bad for myself than actually helping somebody. — Jesse Eisenberg

Who walks around proud of things they've done? That's an obnoxious quality. — Jesse Eisenberg

If you went to Harvard Medical School, chances are you'll be a doctor at some place. There's a career trajectory. Acting, there's nothing. It's constantly trying to procure jobs - it's very disconcerting. — Jesse Eisenberg

I felt self-conscious going out in the street prior to ever even being in a movie. That's just me. — Jesse Eisenberg

I personally don't feel the need to be radical for its own sake, but I probably couldn't if I tried anyway. — Jesse Eisenberg

I live in New York City, where, if you're in a movie at a popular independent theater, you think you're king of the world, because you're in a bubble. So there's no way for me to properly conceive of the attention that the movie gets in a way that doesn't make me confused. — Jesse Eisenberg

I don't have a Facebook page because I have little interest in hearing myself talk about myself any further than I already do in interviews or putting any more about myself online than there already is. — Jesse Eisenberg

I made the mistake of writing something very, very short about Obama for this website that I write fiction for, and my father told me never do that again. And he was right. I have nothing to add to a political conversation because it's not my area. — Jesse Eisenberg

I always think the second worst thing in the world is to go on stage at night, and the first worst thing in the world is sitting at home at night. For me, it's scarier to not be doing it than doing it. — Jesse Eisenberg

I have an iPad and I watch three things: 'The Daily Show,' '60 Minutes,' and 'Meet the Press.' — Jesse Eisenberg

It's a very strange experience to watch yourself in a movie anyway. I most frequently don't do it, but if I was going to do it, I would do it in a private way, not at a public screening at a film festival, which is just an overwhelming experience. — Jesse Eisenberg

If you look at the movies that come out, most of them are bad, so it's not as if achieving some level of success means you get offered better roles, because frankly they don't seem to exist. — Jesse Eisenberg

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

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. — Jesse Eisenberg

I write plays instinctively. I don't like writing movie scripts. — Jesse Eisenberg

If you're afraid of everything out there, you quit going out there. — Jesse Eisenberg

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

I'm not on Page Six, because I don't have anything salacious happening in my life ... unfortunately. — Jesse Eisenberg

The first rule of Zombieland: Cardio. When the zombie outbreak first hit, the first to go, for obvious reasons ... were the fatties. — Jesse Eisenberg

Because going through a hard life with someone else is better than going through an easy life alone. — Jesse Eisenberg

When you're on set you don't realize the way something is going to look since you're on the other side of the camera. — Jesse Eisenberg

I see writing and acting as different parts of the same continuum. Writing is better for intense emotion. If you're very angry about something, you shouldn't present it as strongly when you're acting. But if you're really angry and writing about it, that's the best way to get it out and across. — Jesse Eisenberg

I purposefully isolate myself from anything that has to do with any press. I don't read any press about myself. — Jesse Eisenberg

As an actor, you try to bring as much of yourself to a part to try and create a feeling of authenticity and emotional truth and resonance. — Jesse Eisenberg

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. — Jesse Eisenberg

My feeling is ... when you show up to a movie set where there's, like, 50 people standing around and months of preparation gone into it, you want to be as prepared as possible, so you should make a million baguettes. That might not actually help in any explicit way, but it'll make you feel more prepared. — Jesse Eisenberg

In 'Zombieland,' it was such a freewheeling plot it almost didn't matter what the characters were doing scene to scene as long as there was a consistent banter. — Jesse Eisenberg

Depression, if it's an unconsciously elected experience, is a luxury. — Jesse Eisenberg

The only way to be turned off to being famous is to be famous. — Jesse Eisenberg

[As an actor] you're looking to crawl into an anonymous fictional person's skin, but then you have the ironic obligation to promoting the movie in such a public way that it almost undermines the initial intention of going under the radar. — Jesse Eisenberg

Mother Teresa was asked what was the meaning of life, and she said to help other people, and I thought, 'What a strange thing to say' - but maybe it's the right thing to say. — Jesse Eisenberg

The only suggestions I get on my plays is to make them more of what they already are, and that's wonderful. — Jesse Eisenberg

The scariest people to turn a movie over to are always the people who are drawing up the poster, because that's the first impression it's going to make. And very often it's portraying a very different film from the one the actors actually did. — Jesse Eisenberg

But kids think differently than adults think. Adults have spent so many years thinking more and more like each other because the more you live with other people the less you think like yourself and the more you think like them. But kids are new people so we still think more normally. — Jesse Eisenberg

I get very homesick, but otherwise it's a great privilege to get to travel for work. — Jesse Eisenberg

I can't watch myself in interviews. I feel like I look like a wreck. My mom is always calling me and going, 'Stop fidgeting,' and it's like, 'You have no idea what it's like, Mom.' — Jesse Eisenberg

Everyone's a geek in some way or other. Everyone's an outsider. — Jesse Eisenberg

When you take on a role, even if the character is somebody that you are dissimilar to, you have to identify with the role and look for an emotional connection even if there is not a biographical one. — Jesse Eisenberg

Where I feel something that I had written was misinterpreted in a way that made people feel bad, that is absolutely horrifying to me. I feel so embarrassed and I feel ashamed that I should make people feel bad. — Jesse Eisenberg

Nothing is harder than working with an actor who doesn't take it seriously or show up in the same way that you are. — Jesse Eisenberg