Jesse Eisenberg: I like unusual experiences

Jesse Eisenberg wants to have the most “unusual experiences” to aid his writing.

The American Ultra actor is also a writer and enjoys seeking out the oddest parts of humanity for his work. So much so, that the 31-year-old could be arrested for stalking if they caught him at a particularly inquisitive moment.

“I try to have the most unusual experiences I can possibly have,” he said in a conversation with Susan Morrison at the New Yorker Festival on Saturday evening (04Oct15) according to Vulture.com. “If there’s a strange man on the street I wanna follow him. If I’m gonna be writing about something, it’s going to be unusual, it’s going to be something you don’t see a lot as opposed to writing some sort of romantic comedy."

A lot of Jesse’s written work has featured stoners. But for the Social Network star, people who get stoned aren’t bringing much to society.

“I think it’s really unproductive [to be stoned], it seems like a very selfish thing to do,” he continued. “I’ve never seen someone stoned and helping. No one says, ‘oh, let’s get stoned and help Jeff move’.”

Jesse has written three plays which include dark characters based on versions of himself.

“Writing is sometimes a cathartic experience and writing comes from a need to express something that can’t be expressed in any other way,” he explained.

As for his acting roles, Jesse likes to have plenty of material to sink his teeth into. This was certainly the case for his next part as Lex Luthor in the highly anticipated Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice.

“There is this trove of stuff about this guy,” he added. “A lot of it's repetitive, like he always winds up on the roof of his building giving some faux benevolent talk about how he's going to change the city,” he explained. “It's fun to take that campy cartoony stuff and try to put it into a real person and try to reconcile the two.”