Jesse Eisenberg joins the adults in 'The Hunting Party'
Jesse Eisenberg can't believe his good fortune.
Which is why, every time he gets cast opposite an actor of the caliber of Richard Gere or Al Pacino - as he has been with regularity since he started acting as a teenager - Eisenberg finds it a nerve-racking experience.
"I've been lucky, but I feel like it's temporary luck," confesses the 23-year-old actor, who stars with Gere and Terrence Howard in "The Hunting Party," opening Sept. 7.
A case in point: Eisenberg, born in New York, co-starred with Pacino and Shawn Hatosy in a workshop production of Lyle Kessler's play "Orphans" in Los Angeles last year. But he couldn't tell you what he learned from working with Pacino, because he spent most of his time worrying he'd make a mistake onstage.
"It was not a freeing experience," Eisenberg admits. "The whole time I was on stage, I was mostly focused on the fact that I didn't want to screw up. It was so overwhelming. It's this really odd paradox: You want the opportunity to work with great people - but when I got the chance to work with Al Pacino, every day felt like I was auditioning."
Eisenberg pauses, then says quickly, as is his style: "I mean, Al Pacino - the guy's insanely great. Acting is such a visceral experience, and you learn by doing it with people who are better than you. As an actor, you have to be open to doing things where you look stupid, to be experimental.
"But that's hard to do when the pressure is so high - even though I know I create my own pressure."
Teaming with Gere and Howard for "The Hunting Party" was less unnerving because the three were almost the only Americans in the cast filming in and around Sarajevo. Eisenberg says they spent weeks working within the confines of a small car, developing a camaraderie.
"[Gere and Howard] are my favorite kind of actors: funny, but realistic," says Eisenberg. "The key to the movie was finding the balance between what plays funny, but not being so funny that you're being disrespectful. Because it is such serious subject matter."
A dark comedy by director Richard Shepard ("The Matador"), "The Hunting Party" focuses on disgraced TV journalist Simon Hunt (Gere), who convinces his former cameraman (Howard) - now a network big shot - that he's got a tip that will help him track down and interview a Serbian war criminal known as The Fox (based on real-life Serbian fugitive Radovan Karadzic). Eisenberg plays the son of a TV exec who's producing his first big assignment and gets pulled into the adventure.
"I wanted to make sure the guy was not just annoying and nerdy," he says. "But Richard really wanted to make a movie of quality. He helped me so my attempts at being humorous didn't go too far."
The role forced Eisenberg to call another temporary halt to his studies at the New School for Social Research; though he's in his fifth year, acting roles have kept him so busy that he's still a junior. Eisenberg had originally applied to New York University - but turned down admission there to make "Roger Dodger," his 2002 breakthrough, in which he played a wayward teen on the brink of adulthood who lets his fast-talking, womanizing uncle (Campbell Scott) show him the ways of the world on a nocturnal tour of Manhattan.
Since then, Eisenberg has done well-regarded turns in films as diverse as "The Village," "The Emperor's Club" and the critically acclaimed "The Squid and the Whale" (which earned him an Independent Spirit Award nomination). But it still isn't easy sometimes to focus on the work.
"In any other career, you hope for an upward trajectory," Eisenberg says. "But when you get to play with Al Pacino at 21, it feels like there's nowhere to go that won't be a disappointment. So I worry that the bottom could drop out."
