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“As an actor, you go into it the way you go into anything else. I was shooting Louder Than Bombs simultaneously, and those experiences were similarly fulfilling. I would wake up at 4 in the morning and contemplate grief. In Louder Than Bombs, my character is grieving over the death of his mother under mysterious circumstances, and in Batman v Superman, my character is grieving over his bad childhood and that feeling of powerlessness in this city that he runs. My experiences were similar. Now of course, the final products couldn’t look more different, will be seen by a different amount of people, and play in different spaces, and yet my experience is the same. That’s why I think actors like doing both kinds of movies, because the experiences can be the same and you get to continue doing what it is you like to do.”
But outside of acting for major motion pictures, Eisenberg agrees that working on theater productions are his favorite thing to do. “My absolute favorite thing to do is to write a play and then, after I finish, do the first reading of it with my friends around the table. That is the most fulfilling acting experience that I could possibly have, with no one watching, and it becomes increasingly uncomfortable as more and more people know about it. The next thing I’m doing is one of my plays in a 400-seat theater on the West End. I will be terrified every night before the play starts, even if 400 people are seeing it, or especially because 400 people are seeing it. That, to me, is what I’m driven by. It just so happens that with Batman v Superman I got to play one of the most interesting characters I assume I’ll ever get to play, in a movie that is probably bigger in scope than I’ll ever be involved with again. And I really hope to play that part again. So I don’t see that big of a difference in my job except when there’s more scrutiny.”
Via Vulture