Your full attention: Jesse Eisenberg’s 10 best film performances – ranked! 15 October 2026 at 07:00

Your full attention: Jesse Eisenberg’s 10 best film performances – ranked!

15 October 2026 at 07:00

As his new movie The Debut closes the London film festival, we count down the best of the actor’s shy, sly and sometimes hairy outings

A doppelganger role can be a trap for an actor: either the two roles are not sufficiently distinct, or they are too hammily different, and either way the result can look like a film school graduation project. But Jesse Eisenberg gives a stylish split-personality turn in Richard Ayoade’s adaptation of the Dostoevsky novella. He plays Simon, a nerdily shy and self-effacing computer programmer in a grim futureworld, ignored by his employers and by co-worker Hannah (Mia Wasikowska), with whom he is hopelessly in love. But then his carbon copy, James, arrives, also of course played by Eisenberg. James is a confident alpha-achiever who impresses his bosses and entrances Hannah – to Simon’s gibbering despair.

Three Mark Zuckerbergs, Three Surprisingly Different Men 11 October 2026 at 05:01

Three Mark Zuckerbergs, Three Surprisingly Different Men

NYT: Technology

By: Alissa Wilkinson

11 October 2026 at 05:01

Jeremy Strong in “The Social Reckoning,” Jesse Eisenberg in “The Social Network” and the real Meta executive are all playing parts. But only one has changed his approach.

From top, Jesse Eisenberg, Mark Zuckerberg and Jeremy Strong.

Hamlet’s goodbye, the last of Leigh, Birmingham blues and a vampire in Vienna: 12 great films at the London film festival 6 October 2026 at 07:29

Hamlet’s goodbye, the last of Leigh, Birmingham blues and a vampire in Vienna: 12 great films at the London film festival

The Guardian

By: Peter Bradshaw

6 October 2026 at 07:29

Our critic picks out some of the most outstanding cinema screening at the UK’s most prestigious film event in 2026

This film puts Andrew Scott in line to become the first out gay man to win the best actor Oscar. He plays Ian Charleson, who became a star in Chariots of Fire and in 1989 took on the role of Hamlet at London’s National Theatre when Daniel Day-Lewis withdrew, despite being desperately ill with Aids, knowing that the strain would accelerate his illness. For Charleson, the play’s themes of life and death, truth and falsehood, justice and injustice, were all too real.

Normal view