At the relatively young age of 35, Jesse Eisenberg has built a reputation for playing smart, nervous guys who may or may not be harboring a dark secret or two. True to form, in his new film, "The Hummingbird Project," in select theaters March 15, he's a self-described hustler trying to beat Wall Street in a game that comes down to the milliseconds.

On "Salon Talks," the real life family man and mental health advocate told SalonTV's Mary Elizabeth Williams that the fun of playing morally ambiguous characters is that "you get to act out the things you would never want to do in real life."

And, Eisenberg added, "You present characters in a morality tale who are immoral. If my character succeeds, what the audience would be taking away is that greed is a positive thing. But what happens in this movie is that these characters don't exactly succeed."

Although he's created a substantial enough body of work that you probably know exactly what is meant when someone describes a character as "a Jesse Eisenberg type," the Oscar-nominated actor and author views himself pragmatically.

"I don't think anybody can possibly perceive themselves in the way that they're perceived by others. You'd have to have some amazing objectivity to think of yourself the way that other people think of you."

He continued, "I think of myself as a basic, unremarkable person, but other people view me through the context of whatever they grew up with. Maybe they think I talk in a fast way. The family I come from, I'm one of the slow ones. In my context, I'm an unremarkable person. I guess to other people I seem unusual. But," he added, "no one feels like they're an unusual person - unless they're actively trying to be unusual."

Watch the episode above to hear more about "The Hummingbird Project," also starring Alexander Skarsgård and Salma Hayek, and more about the "Zombieland" sequel, premiering later this year.


Photography by Jill Greenberg. Watch Jill's TedxTalk on the Female Lens and the problem with only seeing the world from a man's perspective. And find out more about Jill's initiative Alreadymade., a mission to hire more female photographers and content creators.