Jesse Eisenberg is not the trickster type. When asked if he would use the skills he learned while researching his role as a magician in Now You See Me to pick up women in bars, Eisenberg demurs.
Dave Franco
"I feel very guilty doing magic because you're deceiving somebody," Eisenberg says. "When I am with David Kwong [the American illusionist who trained him] and he does magic, people love it and they don't want to know. I just feel immediately guilty that I tricked them and tell them how it's done and David gets upset and the night ends pretty early."
In Now You See Me, released locally on Thursday, Eisenberg plays Atlas, a sleight of hand master and the leader of a magic supergroup called the Four Horsemen.
An FBI agent (Mark Ruffalo) targets the group after they pull off two dazzling bank heists during their shows _ robbing a bank on another continent in one and funnelling a white collar criminal's millions into audience members' bank accounts in another. In keeping with the theme of illusion, the movie itself is structured as if it were the three acts of a magic trick being played out.
Eisenberg says that the compelling and complex script drew him to the project originally.
"It's like a mystery movie, where you're trying to figure out how these magicians are doing these elaborate and very complicated tricks, and over the course of the movie you start to piece things together," he says. "It was a convincing mystery."
His character's life away from the limelight was just as interesting to Eisenberg.
"The character is one of the world's greatest magicians, so in his personal life, off stage, he struggles to maintain control over everything," he says. "As a magician you're in control of everything, you've preplanned every aspect of your behaviour. In his personal life, though, he struggles to maintain that same kind of control."
That dichotomy between life on and off stage struck a chord with Eisenberg who read the script while performing a play in New York. Like Atlas, Eisenberg found it much easier to be on stage than off during a period of such intense focus.
"I really liked doing the play, but the off-time was torturous because you're just anticipating this significant thing you have to do every night. I assumed that's probably what this character is dealing with." he says. "That was the most exciting part of the character for me because I could immediately relate to that experience."
Jesse Eisenberg
And then there's the cast. The greatest trick that the producers and French director Louis Leterrier pulled off might have been assembling such a star studded group. In addition to Eisenberg, the other three "horsemen" are Woody Harrelson as a mind-reader, Dave Franco as a master pickpocket and Isla Fisher as an escape artist. Morgan Freeman plays a magic debunker out to expose the group and Michael Caine co-stars as the Four Horsemen's benefactor.
Eisenberg says the film's cast is a credit to Leterrier's approach to the material. "To assemble a cast like this for a movie that has such a complicated plot, and has such amazing effects, and such a cool storyline, it doesn't necessarily require the actors that they've assembled," he says. "So it's a really amazing thing that he fought for actors who do independent movies and theatre to be in a movie that probably could survive on its own based on the cool premise."
The 29-year-old actor is not used to starring in films that are, as he says, "paced at this speed". He is perhaps best known for his Golden Globe and Oscar nominated portrayal of Mark Zuckerberg in The Social Network and films such as Holy Rollers, which was nominated for the Grand Jury Prize at the Sundance Film Festival.
But regardless of whether he's in film festival fare or a major international release such as Now You See Me, Eisenberg says his approach remains the same to each role is the same. "I mean, this movie probably edits more quickly than an independent movie or something, but my job doesn't really change that much."
Leterrier, who previously directed the first two Transporter movies as well as 2010's Clash of the Titans, is "like the tallest kid I ever met", Eisenberg says. "He just has so much fun doing the scenes. You know just by watching him work that the scene is going to be fun to watch because he has such a great time with it."
Eisenberg's mother, Amy, is an entertainer "using a very loose sense of the term", he says _ a clown at children's parties. She felt no animosity when her son told her that he would be playing that other staple of little kid get-togethers, the magician. He said one of the reasons he chose the role was due to a childhood fondness for party illusionists. Growing up his mother had an arrangement with a magician to cover for her when she was ill and to perform at Jesse's birthday parties.
"I guess to have an understudy that is also a birthday party clown is probably threatening to job security, so she had someone who wouldn't compete," he says. "And this guy was so wonderful."
The actor doesn't consider himself a sleight of hand master but he says he did learn the principles of the craft from Kwong.
"I realised early on in the training that if you learn some of the basic principles you can apply those to many different tricks or illusions. And what my character does really well is take those principles and use them to create these totally innovative illusions."
Eisenberg is quick to point out, however, that while the movie delves into magic, it does not spill the beans on the secrets behind the craft, a contentious point when the film was being made.
"There were some debates over whether or not to reveal certain tricks in the movie, but the most important thing is what these magicians are doing is so singular and unique that it's not revealing too much," he says. "Morgan Freeman plays a 'magic debunker", so he makes and sells DVDs of him revealing the great magic tricks. And he's seen by the movie as not a noble character.
Despite the "big budget feel" of Now You See Me, Eisenberg finds similarities between his character in the film and other roles he's played, including his turn as Facebook's Zuckerberg.
"Atlas is controlling and probably unsympathetic in the same way that the character I play in The Social Network is," he says. "But this character is like a performer, whereas the character in that [The Social Network] was really a hermit, so that's pretty different. But in terms of their need to control and to manipulate, their need to be in their element at all times, that's probably similar."
Now You See Me also marks the reunion of Eisenberg with his co-star from Zombieland Woody Harrelson, who plays a mind-reader in the film.
"I love working with him, everybody does. He is one of these very unique actors that is as comfortable in a movie like this where there's a lot of effects and where it's fact-paced ass well as movies like an independent movie that is shot in 20 days or something," he says.
Harrelson's experience across such a broad spectrum of films helped Eisenberg immensely.
"This is one of my first bigger movies at this scale, and so to have him there and to see how he paces himself throughout a day ... that's helpful to see," he says. "On a personal level, I like him so much, and we have similar tastes in drama and in comedy, so it's very helpful to work with somebody where you have a similar aesthetic."
Isla Fisher and Woody Harrelson.
