As Nicholas Hoult‘s Lex Luthor is revealed in the first teaser for James Gunn‘s Superman, Jesse Eisenberg is lamenting his own stint as the supervillain.
The Oscar nominee recently reflected on his “poorly received” turn as Lex in Zack Snyder‘s Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice (2016) and Justice League (2017), explaining how it “hurt” his career.
“I was in this Batman movie and the Batman movie was so poorly received, and I was so poorly received,” he said on Dax Shepard’s Armchair Expert podcast. “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.”
Although Batman v. Superman flopped among critics with a 29% Tomatometer score on Rotten Tomatoes, it soared at the box office with a $874 million global haul. Justice League continued the streak with a slightly better Tomatometer rating at 39% and $661 million worldwide.
“I’ve been in poorly received things that just don’t see the light of day, and for the most part, no one knows,” explained Eisenberg. “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.”
Henry Cavill as Clark Kent, Jesse Eisenberg as Lex Luthor and Ben Affleck as Bruce Wayne in Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice (2016) (Warner Bros./Courtesy Everett Collection)
Regardless of the DC movies’ impact on his career, Eisenberg appears to have bounced back, recently securing two Golden Globe nominations for his film A Real Pain, including Best Actor in a Motion Picture — Musical or Comedy and Best Screenplay.
Eisenberg previously told Deadline he wouldn’t rule out a return to the DC onscreen universe. “I’d be shocked if I wound up in a DC movie, but it would be a pleasant shock,” he said in 2022.
“Listen, I’m not a comic book fan. To me, it was not playing a role that I’d envisioned since childhood,” Eisenberg continued. “To me, it was a chance to play this great character that this great writer wrote, and I loved doing that. So, to play it is a joy, and to not play it isn’t something that I’m going to be ashamed to tell my kids about, because that is not an important genre in my life, even though I loved doing that movie.”