Why is it a shame Jesse Eisenberg never got Facebook? Because Facebook sees everything. Hell, Facebook 

 everything, too, which is even scarier when you think about it. Every post you make. Every photo you take. Every person who accepts every friend request you send. And it stores all of this information in a neat little feature called, rather nostalgically and not sinisterly at all; ‘Memories’.

And then, every day if you ask it too, your little blue app will take a digital deep dive back along your timeline and dredge up some embarrassing, depressing or just incredibly mundane titbit from your past to show you.

Although Jesse Eisenberg’s Facebook Memories wouldn’t be boring at all — especially not this year. If Jesse Eisenberg was on Facebook, he’d be getting constant notifications at the moment. And that’s because, a decade ago this year, 

Of course, Eisenberg doesn’t have Facebook — most of the headlines that surrounded the film’s 2010 release told us as much. But why? At the time, the man who played Mark Zuckerberg so masterfully gave several explanations. He was too self-loathing for it, he said in one interview. Technology, try as he might, just didn’t seem to like him, he revealed in another. He had little interest in talking about himself, he shrugged in a third.

Today, almost a decade to the day since we first saw 

’s iconic ‘words-on-face’ poster, Eisenberg offers me another reason. “I don’t have social media accounts,” he says, “because my life already feels far too public.”

And publicity seems to be a problem for the actor. He openly admits that, even after this interview; “I will feel immediately embarrassed that I divulged so much about myself.”

But he shouldn’t worry. Eisenberg, like Zuckerberg, is something of a closed book. He never lets too much emotion escape. He doesn’t even seem bothered that 

the only Oscar-nominated performance of his career so far, is 10-years-old this year. He does, however — and somewhat surprisingly — remain open to the prospect of a sequel. Last year, screenwriter Aaron Sorkin admitted that there was now enough new material to start writing an official sequel. Eisenberg agreed, but also admitted that no plans have been made.

“I’m not aware of either the project,” he elaborated when asked about a sequel, “or even the current controversy of the company.”

That seems hard to believe. Not about the sequel — but rather the scandals. Because you don’t have to be on Facebook to know that it is a contentious brand. The social network is juggling so many offences and improprieties these days that it can be hard to know which to focus on and, since the David Fincher-directed origin story was released ten years ago, Mark Zuckerberg has had something of a decas horribilis.

’s Person of the Year in 2010, seven years after first launching the site. In 2012, he bought Instagram for $1 billion, and the company went public. But, just one year later, things started to falter when a hacker very publicly accessed Zuckerberg’s personal account. In 2014, it was revealed that Facebook had been conducting psychological tests on 70,000 unconsenting participants. And, in 2016, the brand’s content policies came under scrutiny when Facebook was caught up in the fake-news-fuelled US Presidential election.

By 2018, things were starting to settle down — but then the big scandal broke. Headlines around the world told the story of Cambridge Analytica, revealing how the data-analytics firm had improperly obtained data from tens of millions of Facebook users. Zuckerberg had to stand up in front of Congress — Eisenberg “just watched a little bit” of the testimony — and Facebook were given a record-breaking $5 billion rap on the knuckles.

Eisenberg’s friends were worried about having their data leaked — as many of us were. But the actor admits that the whole debacle meant very little to him.

“I have very few feelings about it,” Eisenberg says, “because I don’t have a Facebook account. So, when I read a story in the paper about the company selling data, it means much less to me than the person who’s data might be being sold.”

It makes sense. But it still seems curious that Eisenberg isn’t more invested in Zuckerberg. He lived in the man’s head and his hoodie for six months, after all. But the two have only met each other once — during an 2011 episode of 

 — and the apathy appears to go both ways. In 2015, during the first public Q&A session at Facebook’s Californian headquarters, Zuckerberg was asked about the film. He told attendees that it had “made up a bunch of stuff that [he] found kind of hurtful,” and that he hadn’t “spent a lot of time thinking about that movie”.

“I kind of blocked that one out,” he added.

Suffice to say, Zuckerberg probably isn’t planning a screening party for the film’s tenth anniversary this September. But he should be. With the backstabbing and the lawsuits, it’s a masterful, Shakespearean piece of cinema. And, for all of Eisenberg’s perceived faults and foibles, his portrayal of Zuckerberg should also be celebrated — even by Zuckerberg. As a performance, it has come to define the acting talents of a generation; an education is hunched-over, stiffly spoken nerdisms — and a pitch-perfect take on both the humanity and inhumanity of a very complicated man.

“There are so many advantages to playing a real person,” Eisenberg offers. “If the person is well-known, there are likely videos and first-person accounts, which are endlessly helpful.”

And Zuckerberg is nothing if not well-known. Eisenberg researched the tech founder tirelessly for the film, discovering that his unnaturally straight posture was a result of his passion for fencing. He took coding lessons so he could convincingly play Zuckerberg at a keyboard. His cousin, Eric Fisher, even got a “pretty high level job” at Facebook during the final weeks of filming. It was a connection Zuckerberg was aware of, if not apparently fazed by.

Eisenberg’s work, as we know, paid off. And, along with a turn as bestselling author David Lipsky in 2015’s 

 is one of Eisenberg’s few takes on a real-life character. That is, until 2020’s 

, a new Eisenberg vehicle that plays out the early freedom fighting days of Marcel Marceau.

The actor says he feels more attuned to the French mime than he did to Zuckerberg — the two actors’ families even come from the same region of Poland. But his description of Marceau still chimes uncannily with the Facebook founder.

“He was never self-deprecating or apologetic about his work,” says Eisenberg, “and I tried to imagine how that attitude would manifest in a young man, who is just starting out and thinks the world has yet to discover how brilliant he is. Whether I succeeded in replicating it is another story.”

Eisenberg, evidently, is incredibly self-deprecating. It’s another reason he doesn’t have social media. But the lack of extra publicity hasn’t affected his career too detrimentally. Over the past 10 years, Eisenberg has starred in some blockbusting films — from playing bombastic, self-important illusionist Daniel Atlas in 

, to shaving his head for the DC Extended Universe and becoming the latest actor to play megalomaniacal arch-villain Lex Luthor.

These are far cries from the feeble, bookish roles Eisenberg embodied when his career began — and 

 seems to mark the turning point between the brow-beaten and the brow-beating. But the actor doesn’t believe he made a conscious pivot towards power-hungry, assertive characters after playing Zuckerberg.

“I haven’t felt any change in my pursuits,” he considers, “even though the entertainment industry has gone through some massive changes. I’m happy to adapt to any changes in entertainment, though.

“I am very flexible based on the requirements of different media,” he continues, “I’ve written plays and musicals and short stories and essays for the New Yorker and McSweeney’s. I’m happy to adapt to whatever medium people are currently engaging with.”

And what mediums there’ll be. With technology facilitating more and more forms of entertainment, there is digital life being breathed into new platforms every year. Virtual reality is poised to bring immersive entertainment into our homes (Facebook, coincidentally, bought VR leaders Oculus back in 2014). Even traditional television is being remixed, with innovations such as 

, a choose-your-own-adventure Netflix special from 

 — a show which has as much advanced technology as it has demonised it.

 has some similarities to Black Mirror,” Eisenberg offers, noting that his 2019 sci-fi thriller has shades of the popular series’ cautionary tech tales. And it’s not the only recent Eisenberg project that vilifies technology. 

, too — a film starring Alexander Skarsgård and Salma Hayek — plugged Eisenberg into the fast-paced world of high-frequency trading, fiberoptic cabling and neutrino messaging.

,” he says of the 2018 film, “I think the danger that it so wonderfully presents is the way we can value wealth creation that has no underlying social value. The characters in that movie are creating sneaky ways to get rich while contributing literally nothing of value to anyone. It’s a great movie that is based on some alarming true stories.”

It’s also the sort of tech-obsessed, based-on-truth story that probably wouldn’t have been given the green light 10 years ago. Even when 

 was first announced, critics branded the subject too automated, cold and quotidian to make a compelling big-screen story. Critical acclaim and eight Oscar nominations later, and the same critics were eating their words.

Tech was suddenly seen as exciting — and we’ve subsequently seen a new sub-genre open up. Want to watch Daniel Radcliffe play the man behind the 

 video game franchise? Of course you do. How about seeing a floppy-haired Benedict Cumberbatch taking on the role of WikiLeaks founder, Julian Assange? Sure. A biopic of Steve Jobs? Have two.

All over these films have served to open our eyes to the grubby side of Silicon Valley, and draw attention to the dangers of technology and the internet. From 2016’s 

“I feel a responsibility to highlight causes that I think are important,” says Eisenberg. “It would be such a waste to not use whatever fame I have to try to raise money or awareness for certain issues.”

But Eisenberg’s issues of choice, it would appear, have not yet extended to Facebook, the mining of our data, and trivialising of our privacy. And, while this may rankle some commentators, perhaps it’s for the best. The intersection of real life and art is a difficult one to negotiate, and perhaps it’ll take a Sorkin-penned sequel for Eisenberg to delve back into the friend-requesting world of Facebook.

If he does, we’ll be the first in line to see his take on Zuckerberg’s last ten years. And who knows? Perhaps the tech founder will once more brand Eisenberg’s portrayal “cruel”. Maybe they’ll have another awkward encounter on 

. But then Jesse Eisenberg doesn’t care about things like that. He’s a movie star. And, after all, you don’t make $1 billion at the box office without making a few enemies.

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