- When I think about like the kind of motivating factors
for me, you know, it's effort and you know, talent
and creativity and all that stuff.
But I cannot underestimate how often I'm just driven
by anxiety and fear.
(audience laughing)
- You and I are both very self-hating.
- A lot of the things that motivate me are like kind
of negative motivators, misery,
(cameras snapping)
self-consciousness, I would say self-hatred,
and a lot of fear.
(audience cheering) (lively music)
I worry all the time that my last job is going
to be the final one I'll ever have in my life.
But you know, when I meet people in other fields
who have kind of forged their own paths,
they have the exact same story.
(paparazzi talking indistinctly)
And it just occurred to me that this is kind
of what like great people are motivated by.
(lively music)
They're amazing at their job, they're creative,
they think outside the box, but they're also worried
that the next time is not going to go well.
Once you're able to kind of reframe that anxiety as fuel,
as motivation, as care, you worry less
and are motivated more.
(dramatic music)
Hi, my name is Jesse Eisenberg.
I'm known as an actor.
I also write and direct
and I forgot the other thing that I was supposed to say
because I was...
Sorry. (beep)
Hi, I'm Jesse Eisenberg.
I'm an actor, writer, and director.
And the most recent thing I did was those three things
on a movie called "A Real Pain."
(dramatic music)
Probably it's important to dispel the myth
that actors are full of themselves
and you know, they're in a movie
so they must be so confident all the time.
As an actor, I've had to cope with like kind
of being a public person and all that entails
because strangely, I often do kind
of receive criticism in places
that I never expected to receive it.
Sometimes people say to me on the street,
"Hey, man, I thought you were okay in that movie."
And they say it as like almost an apology
and it makes you feel even worse.
You know, you care like anybody else who works on anything,
how the thing is going to be received.
And sometimes for an actor it's heightened that much more
because it's being written about everywhere.
(playful music)
If you're somebody with the inclinations
that I have towards self-doubt, towards self-criticism,
what I have created was essentially kind of a bubble
that allows me to work at my best.
It sounds strange,
but I don't watch the movies I've been in.
I don't read any reviews of movies that I'm in.
I go so far as to not bike past streets that are overflowing
with movie advertisements
'cause it makes me self-conscious on my way to work.
(playful music)
And I know it sounds a little bit like I'm making my life
unusually difficult and I should just confront those things,
I should just hold the tarantula in my hands, so to speak,
bike past those movie posters.
But the truth is I found I am most effective
by not thinking about that stuff, by not becoming obsessed
with something that I can't control.
Maybe it comes from a place of fear or weakness,
but to me it's the only way I can kind of self-motivate.
(playful music)
(pensive music)
I've recently started directing.
I've directed two movies now.
Being in this kind of new strange place
of like being a manager of people so to speak
has not been the easiest transition for me.
I realized pretty quickly I am not a great leader
in the traditional sense of being able to kind
of lead a group into battle.
My advantage was not so much in talking loudly
about the thing we need to get
and screaming at people that the sun's going down,
but I am very good at knowing what everybody does
and how to kind of get the best from them.
So if you're somebody who feels like me,
somebody who feels like they would not be able
to lead an army into battle, try to think of all
of the wonderful leaders that you've worked for.
The best leaders I worked for were really kind
of like the quiet, sweet directors who motivated in subtle,
sweet, quiet, relatable ways.
The leaders that you like working for
are probably not the kind of bombastic, confident person
who's the loudest in a room.
I imagine what you might discover is that the leaders
that you really liked working for
are probably a lot like you.
How did they do it? How did they excel?
I've only directed two movies
and I've interviewed people for various jobs,
for production design, for editing, for music composition,
for costumes, for cinematography
who have done 40 movies in their position.
And I've done one or two.
Most people I'm working with know 1,000 times more
about their jobs than I do.
And so it's important to kind of defer to them
and to kind of be humble, be open to learning,
and also be able to kind of provide a space
for other people to excel.
I am a person who very much wants to collaborate
with somebody who has as good or better ideas than I do.
I am not somebody who wants to be right,
and that has motivated me to find people
who are very collaborative.
That kind of humility, that kind of eagerness
to learn from others and the eagerness to defer
to others has just been a great asset for me.
You learn very quickly in acting class
that acting, like almost every other collaboration,
requires reacting to the other person,
to the collaborator's intention
and performing in conjunction with it.
The movie I just finished directing,
the two leading characters are played by me
and the wonderful actor Kieran Culkin, who's on "Succession"
and is an absolute genius performer in ways
that I don't even know audiences are fully aware of
because I got to see him improvise
in these incredibly complicated character moments.
And yet it was very often not the thing that I had written
and not the thing that I had expected to perform against.
So theoretically, I should have all the authority
in the world to tell him exactly
how I want it to be performed.
And I discovered I think on the second day
that that was not going to be effective.
That when I kind of try to micromanage his wonderful,
lived in, loose performance, it was not helping him.
When you're acting in a scene, you're supposed
to stand on like a little mark
so that it makes the lighting look good on your face
and it makes the camera framing
for all the other actors appropriate.
He wouldn't stand on marks.
And when I asked him to stand on a mark a few times
that we did, it would stifle him.
He would work so much better when it was loose
and when he was loose, he was so brilliant.
When I was thinking about like kind of the priorities
of the movie, the first priority of this movie
is that this character is loose, alive, and complicated.
That is so much more important than having the actor
in the exact place.
Sorry, how can I then link this back
to something bigger and better?
(bell dinging)
What I've discovered is that you really should not try
to engineer the other person's work.
You should help them achieve the thing that they do best.
And so as a director, I was just enthralled by allowing him
to fully live in this role, to be loose, to improvise,
to say what was on his mind.
And it made the movie so much better
and it made this set just this kind
of wonderfully enriching, fun place.
(lively music)
Sometimes it might be intimidating
to think about collaborating with somebody
who might be more successful,
more experienced in their field.
The first movie I directed starred
one of the greatest film actresses
of all time, Julianne Moore.
And I had never directed a movie before,
but I had acted in so many movies
and I know what I wanted from a director.
What I love to have as an actor, from my leader,
from my boss, from the director, is I love them
to really pay attention to what I'm doing
and give feedback on that.
And when I was directing again this unbearably talented,
shockingly astonishingly talented woman, Julianne Moore,
I was so intimidated to do exactly
what I always want directors to do.
I think the reason I was probably a little intimidated
was because I thought she would see me
for the fraud that I must be.
And so for the first week,
I kind of like stayed away from her.
I didn't know if she wanted me to give feedback
or to ask her to try something in a different way.
And finally, when I just like splashed proverbial cold water
in my face, I realized, no,
that's exactly what, of course, she wants.
That's what I would want. That's what anybody would want.
And so I started giving her some notes
and we had the most fun.
She argued back with me, of course,
sometimes when she disagreed, which is totally healthy
and wonderful, an important part of the process.
And so what I discovered is being in a kind of position
of intimidation with a colleague is not a sustainable place.
I think Julianne Moore is more talented than me.
I think she's a better actor than I'll ever be.
I think she's smarter about stories than me,
but those thoughts were not very helpful.
The helpful thoughts were, oh, I have a really funny idea
for this scene and this character that she's playing,
and I'm going to tell her what those are now.
And that's like so much more, you know, effective
and such a more fun partnership to have with somebody.
Sorry, is that okay? Or did I say okay?
Yeah?
(lively music)