Jesse Eisenberg Says One Role Hurt His Career

Jesse Eisenberg is having a bit of an awards season moment this year with his acclaimed movie A Real Pain, which he stars in alongside Kieran Culkin and also directed and wrote.

Jesse’s had an impressive career that’s stretched across multiple decades at this point — but every impressive career has its lows as well as highs.

The culprit? 2016’s Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, a critically maligned DC Universe film that, at this point, you honestly might have forgotten even exists.

In case you forgot: Jesse played Superman’s perpetual nemesis Lex Luthor in the film — and with a luscious head of hair to match, no less.

“I was in this Batman movie and the Batman movie was so poorly received, and I was so poorly received,” he told Dax Shepard in the interview.

“I’ve never said this before, and it’s kind of embarrassing to admit, but I genuinely think it actually hurt my career in a real way, because I was poorly received in something so public.”

“In the industry, if you’re in a huge, huge movie and not seen as good, the people who are choosing who to put next in their movie are just not gonna select you,” Jesse explained, going on to claim that he’s also starred in “poorly received things that just don’t see the light of day, and for the most part, no one knows.”

“But this was so public, and I don’t read notices or reviews or movie press or anything, so I was unaware of how poorly it was received.”

Despite all this, Jesse also insisted that he “loved” the movie. “So I feel just myself to blame,” he added. “I’m not like they did me wrong. No. I’m like, ‘Oh, I guess I did something wrong there.’ And so it did feel like I had to climb out again.”

“It was depressing, but I’m depressed all the time in some ways. Just like, ‘Oh, yeah, of course, I had this great opportunity. Of course, it didn’t go well.’ Just pessimism.”