Hollywood loves itself a nerd, but usually in very stereotypical (and very white male) terms, especially the ones established in the 1980s that saw pocket protectors and Rick Moranis become the go-to visual signifiers for goofball nerds. But while legendary screen performer Moranis and a number of these other depictions of nerds in pop culture could be fun, they did tend to be more surface-level stereotypes. It's easy to see actor Jesse Eisenberg being somebody who could have been pigeonholed into the nerd movie archetype. After all, Hollywood has a very narrow idea of who can be a conventional Hollywood leading man (beefy, white, extremely masculine, etc.) and if you don't fall into that category, you tend to fall into an archetype like "the nerd".
Eisenberg's played his fair share of nerdy individuals in his career, ones marked by social awkwardness, a tendency for quiet comedic line deliveries and a tendency to be easily flustered. But what's impressive about Eisenberg is how he's able to so often imbue a sense of distinct personality into each role that makes them far more than just stereotypical movie nerds. Just take his first major feature film role, The Squid and the Whale, where he plays Walt Berkman, a studious teenage bookworm grappling with his parent's divorce in a variety of ways, including fully emulating his cultured father. By the film's end, the Dad Walt has so admired has turned out to be a far more flawed individual than he originally imagined and Walt instead turns to gaze upon a museum exhibit he visited as a child in bygone happy days for a sense of solace in a time of turmoil.
Like so many of his roles, it's easy to see Walt, in the wrong hands, just being a forgettable stereotype seen all the time in indie cinema, specifically that of the tormented teenage son caught in a divorce. But Eisenberg's constantly makes how Walt is grappling with his parent's divorce so achingly real that he's elevated far beyond being any kind of derivative archetype. By the end, the crushing reality of his Dad being just a human being lands with as much of an impact on the viewer as it does with Walt because of Eisenberg's ability to fully immerses the viewer into his perspective that previously couldn't even comprehend his Dad being any less than perfect.
Injecting tangible reality into teenage roles would be a quality that served Eisenberg well in another one of his most memorable roles in Adventureland, a 2009 feature hailing from director Greg Mottola that sees Eisenberg playing James Brennan, a teenager working at an amusement park for the summer to earn up some cash. Adventureland is a movie where so many of its performers really get to shatter expectations and shine (Ryan Reynolds being one of them) and Eisenberg is no exception. Instead of just doing a repeat of Walt or harkening back to the thinly-defined nerd archetypes of the 1980s (the era in which the film is set), Eisenberg opts for a performance that constantly emphasizes how James is a recognizably human teenager. Walt was a teenager constantly imitating a middle-aged culture connoisseur, James, meanwhile, doesn't even try to cover up his teenage vulnerabilities and inexperience.
He's a kid just as capable of maybe catching the eye of his crush (played by Kristen Stewart) as he is at crashing his Dad's car. Adventureland works as well as it does because of how in touch with reality it is and Eisenberg's performance as James Brennan is a key example of that. To paraphrase Leonardo DiCaprio in Django Unchained, with The Squid and the Whale and Adventureland, Eisenberg had our curiosity, but then with 2010s The Social Network, he had our attention. A David Fincher film even more urgently relevant today as it was nine years ago, Eisenberg portrays the king of the nerds in The Social Network, Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg. But don't expect that to mean he succumbs to just playing a stereotypical Hollywood nerd, far from it.
For this role, Eisenberg worked overtime to ensure his Zuckerberg truly felt like a one-of-a-kind creation by tightening up his speaking patterns and carried an aloof air that was nowhere to be found his prior work. In the process, Eisenberg created something truly extraordinary, especially since he turned out to be born to deliver Aaron Sorkin-penned dialogue. Though he didn't pull a Christian Bale in Vice in terms of overhauling himself physically, Eisenberg's work as Zuckerberg is still truly a transformative performance. Eisenberg took a massively influential icon like Mark Zuckerberg and created a performance that takes a viewer through every emotion. You laugh with Zuckerberg, you sympathize with him, you hate him, you're terrified of him, every inch of the way, Eisenberg's riveting performance makes the rollercoaster experience Zuckerberg takes both the in-movie characters and viewer on one you just can't look away from. It's hard to pick my favorite bit of acting from Eisenberg from this movie, but it may just come from the final scene of The Social Network.
This scene concerns Eisenberg as Zuckerberg blankly stares at and constantly refreshes a laptop in hopes of an old lover accepting his friend request lays the frighteningly simple motivation of the character bare all through Eisenberg doing the simplest gestures and facial expressions. What a haunting finish for a magnificent performance that still stands as Eisenberg's best work as a performer to date. Not that he hasn't done some sterling work in the years since The Social Network, goodness no. He made for an excellent audience point-of-view character in The End of the Tour while he was an amusing unorthodox action hero in American Ultra.
But last week, I got to see Jesse Eisenberg deliver a performance that comes close to rivaling his Mark Zuckerberg performance as his best work yet as an actor. In the lead role of The Art of Self-Defense (which goes into theaters everywhere on Friday!), writer/director Riley Stearns delivers Eisenberg a fascinating role examining toxic masculinity and how it spreads in the context of a dark comedy set at a karate dojo. In the part of the protagonist, Casey Davies, Eisenberg emphasizes quiet meekness that's both hilarious and also couldn't be further away from the assuredness that marked his prior Squid and the Whale and Social Network roles.
Eisenberg's Davies starts out as an already compelling foil to the intimidating world around him, especially since his comic timing in his dialogue deliveries is absolutely splendid. But his work only grows all the more enthralling as his character gradually becomes more and more committed to treating everyone around him full-on aggression and emotional detachment. Once that transition happens, well, I won't divulge spoilers, but Eisenberg becomes a menacing on-screen presence that's totally surprising in its believability and a testament to his versatility as a performer. Eisenberg's top-notch work in The Art of Self-Defense serves as just another example of how this actor has spent a career delivering performances that supersede just being derivative nerd stereotypes by bringing so much beguiling depth to the table. Hollywood hands Jesse Eisenberg nerds and he, alongside the scripts he works with, of course, makes them into mesmerizing recognizably human creations.
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