Jesse Eisenberg Quotes

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.

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.

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.

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.

I hate watching me. I hate watching me. It just makes me feel awful. I think, ‘I look stupid from that angle. I wish I didn’t let them put that shirt on me.’

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.

To criticize Facebook is to criticize the telephone.

Who walks around proud of things they’ve done? That’s an obnoxious quality.

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

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.

I’m not on Page Six, because I don’t have anything salacious happening in my life… unfortunately.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

I get very homesick, but otherwise it’s a great privilege to get to travel for work.

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.

In New York, everybody is their own celebrity, so they’re not so interested in other people.

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

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.

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.

I know some amazing actors who are not mortified every moment of the day, so my feeling is that maybe you don’t have to be a wreck to be good.

I meet people who are in movies, and the stuff that they write is terrible, but nobody tells them that because they’re famous. So I worry that my stuff might be like that, too.

My job when I’m acting in a movie is very limited to playing a role. I’m not evaluating somebody. I’m only evaluating them insofar as they’re interacting with me, but I’m not evaluating their skill set and I don’t watch the movies, so I’m not aware of the way they’re putting things together.

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

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.

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

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.

I don’t follow sports that much now, but I was a Phoenix Suns fanatic in the early ’90s.

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.

In acting class, you’re trained to express yourself as much as you can.

I feel very guilty doing magic because you’re deceiving somebody.

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.

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.

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.

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

I grew up in Queens and New Jersey. I started doing children‘s theater when I was seven to get out of school because I didn’t fit in.

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.

All of my pleasures are guilty, but that’s just the way I’m wired.

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

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.

I feel equal parts lucky and scared anytime I get a job.

I think the most important thing for an actor is reading the script and trying to figure out if you can play that character well. The last thing on my mind is if the director made good movies previously. It’s not my job to know if that director’s last movie was any good – it’s my job to know if I can play the role.

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.

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.

I don’t concern myself with thinking ahead to the finished product. I focus more specifically on what the character is experiencing. Once you relieve yourself of the very arbitrary and always punishing pressure of what an audience is expecting you to do, acting becomes a lot more fun and pure.

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

Depression, if it’s an unconsciously elected experience, is a luxury.

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

As for environmentalism, I’m only an environmentalist by accident. I live in New York, so I bike, and the closest grocery store to me sells organic produce. I also shop with a book bag because I ride a bike, and it’s hard to carry the paper or plastic bags.

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.

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.

I grew up in an apolitical household. I never left the country. When I became an adult, I started traveling and became interested in politics, and I probably talked about things in a silly, ignorant way.

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.’

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.

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

I write all the time because I’m lonely. When you’re acting, you’re working every day all day. But then you have long amounts of time off.

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.

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.

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.

The only way to be turned off to being famous is to be famous.

As an actor, you are in a unique position because you’re not only memorizing dialogue but really embodying it. You naturally feel the rhythm of good writing.

The ideal way to approach a character is to find something in yourself that relates in some way.

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.

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.