Jesse Eisenberg says playing this ‘poorly received’ character genuinely hurt his career
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Eisenberg says playing Lex Luthor in the DC films set him back as an actor. Jesse Eisenberg believes his “poorly received” performance as Lex Luthor in Zack Snyder’s Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice and Justice League really set back his career.
![[Ben Affleck and Henry Cavill in Batman v Superman]](https://static.independent.co.uk/s3fs-public/thumbnails/image/2015/07/07/14/BVS-FP-0237-HR.jpg)
The Social Network actor, 41, spoke about the 2016 and 2017 films, and said that while he had been in other performances that were similarly poorly received, nothing else had such an impact as the DC films. “I was in this Batman movie and the Batman movie was so poorly received, and I was so poorly received,” Eisenberg told Dax Shepard on the 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.
![[David Corenswet in ‘Superman’]](https://static.independent.co.uk/2024/12/19/15/Screenshot-2024-12-19-at-15.09.00.jpg)
“I’ve been in poorly received things that just don’t see the light of day, and for the most part, no one knows. 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.”.
Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice grossed $874m worldwide, but fared very badly with critics. The Independent’s Jack Shepherd rated the film poorly, writing that the film “doesn’t have a rich or interesting enough plot to occupy three hours”.
Justice League fared similarly – it grossed $661m worldwide, but received a two-star rating from Geoffrey Macnab, who wrote: “This is surely the most infantile of recent superhero yarns – a film that squanders the talents of an impressive ensemble cast and eschews any meaningful characterisation in favour of ever more overblown special effects.”.
