Jesse Eisenberg Jason Mendez/WireImage
Jesse Eisenberg says he is in the process of becoming a citizen of Poland.
“I applied for Polish citizenship about 9 months ago. Apparently, all the paperwork has already been submitted and I’m waiting for the final signature,” Eisenberg, 40, told local newspaper Głos Wielkopolski earlier this month. “My family is from the south-east of Poland, from Krasnystaw. My wife’s family is from Łódź. We wanted to have a better bond with Poland, and I would like to work here more.”
Eisenberg, who is married to Anna Strout, explained that he shot his directorial film A Real Pain in Poland and wanted “to repeat it” with future projects.
“I feel a bond with Poland,” he said. “Growing up, I heard stories about Polish relationships with my Jewish family, and all of those stories were wonderful. We were best friends with Poles.”
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Eisenberg’s A Real Pain, in which he directed and starred, was inspired by his ancestral home in Poland. (The picture will be released in October.)
“My family lived in Krasnystaw until the war began. One person survived the war and moved to Szczecin. Sadly, she recently died from COVID,” the Social Network star explained. “This movie is fiction. It is about two American cousins who go to Poland, on a journey to their roots, to see where their family comes from. It’s a bit of a buddy comedy [and] we filmed in all the places my family is from.”
A Real Pain was filmed in Krasnystaw, Warsaw, Lublin, Kraśniki and Radom, which inspired his citizenship plan.
“When I worked here, I met people who had connections with the government. So I told them that I would really like to create a better relationship between Jews and Poles,” Eisenberg said. “For me, it’s very sad that these relationships are not the best. I told them I would love to do it. My family is from here, my wife’s family is from here. I asked: ‘Is there any option to apply for Polish citizenship?’”
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Eisenberg, who hails from New York, was raised Jewish and connected with his faith late in life.
“[Chabad] gave me a Bar Mitzvah and I had never had one,” he previously told W magazine in 2010 of the religious organization, which helped him prepare to play a Hasidic Jew in Holy Rollers. “But, personally, I was always just thinking about the movie and the character. I wasn’t really having a purely spiritual experience.”
Before his ritual Bar Mitzvah, Eisenberg only knew the “most basic prayers” and allegedly wasn’t encouraged to memorize a Torah portion.
Us Weekly has reached out to Eisenberg’s reps for further comment about his citizenship process.