Best Film: The Social Network
Jesse Eisenberg, ‘To Rome With Love’ Star, On Fame And Working With Woody Allen
From Owen Wilson to Jason Biggs, Woody Allen’s been on a decade-long search for the new nebbish. So, it was only a matter of time before he landed on New York-born Jesse Eisenberg. The 28-year-old actor broke onto the scene by playing the neurotic problem child in Noah Baumbach’s “The Squid and the Whale,” and imbues even his lighter roles — “Adventureland” and “30 Minutes or Less” — with stuttering intellectualism and a terrible problem with authority.
But in Allen’s newest comedy, “To Rome With Love,” Eisenberg is not simply the latest incarnation of Woody. In a casting twist, he plays a youthful reflection of Alec Baldwin’s character, a famous architect visiting his old stomping grounds. As Jack, Eisenberg is a self-possessed twenty-something whose carefree stint in Italy is interrupted when his girlfriend’s (Greta Gerwin) sexy, pseudo-intellectual friend (Ellen Page) pays a visit.
Eisenberg spoke to Moviefone about his upcoming role and his relationship to fame. He also (really) gushes over the fact that he got to work with Woody Allen.
How does one get involved with a Woody Allen movie? Does he just call you up?
Yeah. It’s a little atypical, I guess. I just went in and I met him and he gave me the script and I read it in his office. And then, you know, regardless of what was in it, I would have wanted to do it because I wanted to work with him, but I liked it, as well. It was fun to see a Woody Allen plot that I could be part of.
So, he kind of had his eye on you?
Well, he’s, I guess, friendly with Greg Mottola, who directed a movie I was in, “Adventureland,” and so when that movie came out, Woody Allen sent Greg an email saying something nice about me and Greg fowarded it to me. So I had known that he had seen something I was in and that was really exciting to me.