Jesse Eisenberg
Eisenberg at the 2007 release of The Living Wake
Born	Jesse Adam Eisenberg (1983-10-05) October 5, 1983 (age 28) Queens, New York, U.S.
Occupation	Actor
Years active	1996–present

Jesse Adam Eisenberg (born October 5, 1983) is an American actor. He made his screen debut with the comedy-drama television series Get Real from 1999 to 2000. After his first leading role in the film Roger Dodger (2002), he appeared in such films as The Squid and the Whale (2005) and The Education of Charlie Banks (2007).

In 2004, Eisenberg was honored with the Vail Film Festival Rising Star Award.^[1] In 2009, he starred in the comedy drama Adventureland and the horror comedy Zombieland, for which he won critical acclaim. He then played Facebook co-founder Mark Zuckerberg in The Social Network (2010), for which he received a Golden Globe and Academy Award nomination in the Best Actor category. He also starred in Holy Rollers (2010), which was nominated for the Grand Jury Prize at the 2010 Sundance Film Festival. Since then, he has voiced the main character in the animated film Rio (2011), and starred in the comedy 30 Minutes or Less (2011). He will once again voice Blu in Rio 2, which is scheduled for a 2014 release.

Early life[link]

Eisenberg was born in Queens, New York City. His mother, Amy (née Fishman), worked as a clown at children's parties, and his father, Barry Eisenberg, ran a hospital and later became a college professor.^[2][3] He has two siblings, Hallie Kate Eisenberg, a former child actress who was once famous as the "Pepsi girl" in a series of commercials, and Kerri.^[4] He was raised in a secular Jewish family^[5] that originated in Poland and Ukraine.^[6][7] Eisenberg grew up in Queens and East Brunswick Township, New Jersey, attending the East Brunswick Public Schools at Frost School, Hammarskjold Middle School, Churchill Junior High School, and spending his sophomore year at East Brunswick High School.^[8]

Eisenberg struggled to fit in at school and began acting in plays at the age of 10, stating "when playing a role, I would feel more comfortable, as you're given a prescribed way of behaving."^[9] Eisenberg studied contemporary architecture at The New School in New York City's Greenwich Village neighborhood. Originally, he had applied and was accepted to New York University, but declined enrollment in order to complete a film role.^[10][11]

Career[link]

Eisenberg's first professional role was in Arje Shaw's off-Broadway play, The Gathering. Eisenberg made his Broadway debut as an understudy in a 1996 revival of Summer and Smoke. He made his screen debut in the 1999 television series Get Real, which was canceled in 2000. In 2001, Eisenberg appeared in a Dr. Pepper commercial in the UK. After appearing in the made-for-television film Lightning: Fire from the Sky, he starred in the independent film Roger Dodger (for which he won an award at the San Diego film festival), and in The Emperor's Club, both of which were released in 2002 to generally positive reviews.

In 2005, Eisenberg appeared in Cursed, a horror film directed by Wes Craven, and The Squid and the Whale, a well-reviewed independent drama also starring Laura Linney and Jeff Daniels.^[10] In 2007, he starred opposite Richard Gere and Terrence Howard in The Hunting Party, a comic thriller in which he plays a young journalist in Bosnia. In 2009, Eisenberg played the lead role in Adventureland, a comedy directed by Greg Mottola and filmed in Kennywood Park near Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Filming ended in October 2007,^[12] and the movie premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in 2009. In November 2007, Eisenberg was cast in the indie comic-drama Holy Rollers. He played a young Hasidic Jew who gets lured into becoming an ecstasy dealer. Filming took place in New York in 2008.^[13] During the late 2000s, he also had roles in the independent films Solitary Man, playing Cheston, and Camp Hope, a horror film directed by George Van Buskirk.^[14][15]