He gained wider recognition for starring as Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg in David Fincher's film The Social Network (2010), for which he was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actor.

In 2022, he starred in the FX / Hulu miniseries Fleishman Is in Trouble and made his film directorial debut with the black comedy When You Finish Saving the World.

[5] His mother, Amy (née Fishman), who now teaches cross cultural sensitivity in hospitals, previously worked as a clown named Bonabini at children's parties and as a director/choreographer for a high school for 20 years.

[25][26] Instead, he studied anthropology and contemporary architecture at The New School in Greenwich Village,[27] where he majored in liberal arts, with a focus on democracy and cultural pluralism.

"[31] Eisenberg started writing screenplays at 16, some of which were optioned by major studios, but he claimed that he was dissatisfied with the lack of control he had over his creations once they were sold.

[37] In 2005, Eisenberg appeared in Cursed, a horror film directed by Wes Craven, and The Squid and the Whale, a well-reviewed independent drama starring Laura Linney and Jeff Daniels.

[38] In 2009, Eisenberg played the lead role alongside Kristen Stewart which would be the first of many collaborations between them in Adventureland, a comedy directed by Greg Mottola and filmed in Kennywood Park, near Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

He starred opposite Woody Harrelson, Emma Stone, and Abigail Breslin as a group of survivors on a road trip through a post-zombie apocalypse America, and was a sleeper hit.

"[47] In 2011, he starred in the box-office animated hit Rio, as the main character Blu, a metropolitan, domesticated male Spix's macaw who learns how to fly.

He starred alongside Anne Hathaway, his former co-star (and onscreen sibling) from Get Real,[48] as well as George Lopez, Tracy Morgan, will.i.am, and Jamie Foxx.

[50] He also starred alongside Aziz Ansari, Danny McBride, and Nick Swardson in 30 Minutes or Less, a film noir heist-comedy about a pizza delivery man, played by Eisenberg, who is forced to rob a bank, which was released in August 2011.

[51] In October 2011, Eisenberg made his playwriting debut in Rattlestick Playwrights Theater's Off-Broadway production of Asuncion, staged at Cherry Lane Theatre.

[61] In the following years, Eisenberg reprised his role as Blu in Rio 2 (2014),[62] and reunited with Stewart in the action comedy American Ultra (2015), playing a rogue sleeper agent being chased by the C.I.A.

[64] Eisenberg's third play, The Spoils, premiered off-Broadway in The New Group Perishing Square Signature Center Alice Griffin Box Theatre.

The play featuring Eisenberg as Ben, also starring Kunal Nayyar, Michael Zegen, Erin Darke, and Annapurna Sriram, was the winner of The Blanche and Irving Laurie Foundation Theatre Visions Fund Award.

[68][69] Eisenberg played the supervillain Lex Luthor in Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice,[70][71] which was released in March 2016, to generally negative reviews.

[70][72] His performance in particular was criticized by comic book fans and film reviewers,[73] later earning him the Golden Raspberry Award for Worst Supporting Actor.

[88] On June 2, 2016, Eisenberg's play The Spoils began a run at London's Trafalgar Studios in the West End, with Scott Elliott returning to direct.

[89] Eisenberg again played the lead role, along with Nayyar and Sriram, while Zegen and Darke's characters were replaced by Alfie Allen and Katie Brayben respectively.

Eisenberg starred alongside Alexander Skarsgård as a high-frequency trader in Kim Nguyen's tech drama The Hummingbird Project that was released in 2018.

[97] In the same year, he produce Jeremy Workman's documentary The World Before Your Feet, which follows a 37-year-old man named Matt Green who has walked over 9,000 miles on the streets of New York City.

[133][134] Despite portraying Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg in one of his most prominent film roles, Eisenberg does not use social media and said in 2016, "I'm terrified of that stuff.

[138] For an article he wrote for InStyle magazine, he played a game of one-on-one with Indiana University women's basketball player Tyra Buss.

[143] Eisenberg collaborated with Child Mind Institute in their #MyYoungerSelf project, where "each day in May a prominent individual will speak to his or her younger self about growing up with a mental health or learning disorder."

"[147] In September 2015, Eisenberg announced that from November, he would match donations made to Middle Way House, a domestic violence shelter in Bloomington, Indiana, up to $100,000 until April 3, 2016.

[98] Eisenberg is a cast member with Theater of War, a performing arts non-profit that presents readings of Sophocles's Ajax and Philoctetes to military and civilian communities across the United States and Europe.

[153] Eisenberg is involved with Keep America Beautiful, which "[engages] individuals to take greater responsibility for improving their community environments,"[154] as well as Shoe Revolt, a "hybrid start-up company that auctions celeb shoes to raise funds to deploy a social franchising model which aims to educate, engage, and empower youth to take the lead in the fight against domestic sex trafficking through peer-to-peer involvement, training, activism and social enterprise development.

The video, titled "What They Took With Them," has the actors reading a poem, written by Jenifer Toksvig and inspired by primary accounts of refugees, and is part of UNHCR's #WithRefugees campaign, which also includes a petition to governments to expand asylum to provide further shelter, integrating job opportunities and education.

[161][162] On March 29, Urban Arts Partnership announced Eisenberg as a special guest for its 2018 gala AmplifiED, dedicated to New Yorkers fighting inequality in public education.

[166][167] According to the review aggregator site Rotten Tomatoes, Eisenberg's most critically acclaimed films are Roger Dodger (2002), The Squid and the Whale (2005), Adventureland (2009), Zombieland (2009), The Social Network (2010), The End of the Tour (2015), Wild Indian (2021), and A Real Pain (2024).