Jesse Eisenberg Used to Have “a Negative Opinion” of Acting: “They Pay Us Too Much, We’re Vain”

Jesse Eisenberg regaled a room of journalists with brilliant — but slightly tragic — tidbits from his childhood and career while discussing his latest feature, The Debut.

Julianne Moore, Paul Giamatti, Halle Bailey, Havana Rose Liu, Bernadette Peters, Colton Ryan, Lilli Cooper, Maulik Pancholy and Bonnie Milligan join Eisenberg in The Debut, following a shy woman (Moore) who is unexpectedly cast in a local production of an original musical. Under the spell of the strong-willed and enigmatic director (Giamatti), she loses herself in the role and the high-stakes world of this community theatre production.

The film is premiering at the San Sebastian Film Festival, where an extremely polite Eisenberg (“thank you so much,” he said after each question) appeared for a press conference on Wednesday.

The actor-writer-director, whose last film A Real Pain was nominated for multiple Oscars, said The Debut is partially autobiographical as it pulls on his own experience joining community theater. “The movie takes place in 1990 in central New Jersey, and when I was in central New Jersey in 1990, I was like [Moore’s character] Mona Friedman. I was so shy. I was depressed, and I didn’t have friends. And then I walked into this community theater when I was seven years old, and suddenly everybody was so nice, and they hugged me,” he said, prompting giggles from the room. “Going from a kid who was made fun of in school because I have the same hair as you, curly hair, and the kids were saying mean things to me. And then I walked into the community theater, and everybody said, ‘Wow, your hair is so amazing! Come this way, you should play with me!'”

Jesse Eisenberg is asked why he chose not to reprise his role as Mark Zuckerberg for Aaron Sorkin’s #TheSocialReckoning at the San Sebastian Film Festival:

“It just didn’t feel like something I wanted to act in again. But that’s nothing to do with how great the movie is… Jeremy… pic.twitter.com/frYHOls2BF

— The Hollywood Reporter (@THR) September 23, 2026

The experience was, to say the least, transformative. “Suddenly it was like I walked into an alien planet where everybody was nice, and then just like Julianne Moore’s character, I took it too far and became crazy. So really, the movie is charting my life when I was a child. But I just thought it would be so much better to make it about an older woman because Julianne’s amazing, and it’s more emotionally impactful to see a woman.”

Such is his admiration for Moore — who starred in Eisenberg’s first directorial feature, 2022’s When You Finish Saving the World — that she changed his long-held view of acting. “I used to have this negative opinion about acting because I was an actor and I just thought, ‘This is just such a ridiculous job. They pay us too much. We’re vain,'” said Eisenberg. “We want to look pretty in the morning, we want to stay in the nicest places, and we want to not ever lift anything on movie sets, and then we want all the credit for the movie! I was always like, ‘This is a weird job, and it’s not fair.’ And then on my first movie, I saw Julianne Moore rehearsing for a scene.”

He saw her on the monitor, preparing for an office scene. “She was going through a real, deep emotional process to get ready for the scene. I remember looking at it, and I go, ‘Oh, wait a second, that’s really hard.’ Like we’re all out here joking, and I’m having a donut, and she’s in there suffering. I realized, ‘Oh, maybe acting is actually a really valuable thing. Maybe difficult. Maybe it’s challenging. Maybe it takes a lot. And suddenly, in [one] moment, my entire opinion on acting changed because I saw somebody else doing it, and it wasn’t just about me.”

Moore and Giamatti, he said, are two of his favorite actors. “And the movie has this element of a romance, which was not in the script at all,” revealed Eisenberg about Giamatti’s onscreen magnetism. “His character is not supposed to be romantically charming. He’s more supposed to be scary and mysterious. But he just brought this warmth to it, and it plays great in the movie.”

Naturally, the filmmaker was also asked about his refusal to return to the role of Mark Zuckerberg in Aaron Sorkin’s hotly anticipated Social Network (2010) follow-up, The Social Reckoning, which will instead see Succession alum Jeremy Strong in the role. “It’s ironic because people associate me with this website, but they know way more about the website than I do, and I like to keep it that way,” replied Eisenberg about the Facebook founder.

“I’ve talked about it a lot, and Aaron Sorkin’s talked about it a lot. I loved his script, and he’s a genius,” continued the star. “And the movie, I’m sure, is incredible. But for me, it just didn’t feel like something I wanted to act in again. But that has nothing to do with how great the movie is. The movie will be a great movie, and Jeremy Strong will be amazing in the movie. I’m sure. I just didn’t feel like it’s something I wanted to do again.”

The 2026 San Sebastian International Film Festival runs Sept. 18-26.