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

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

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. Continue reading...