In our world, where celebrity virtue is pulled directly from the theater, an actor’s recent announcement lands with rare impact.
Jesse Eisenberg, best known for roles in The Social Network and the Now You See Me series, shared this week that he will donate a kidney in mid-December.
We’re seeing one person quietly offering something essential to another with no fanfare or camera crew documenting a dramatic moment.
Eisenberg seems to be one of the good guys in Hollywood, without the eponymous public scandal that actors seem to find themselves in. He’s talked candidly about topics that might strike a chord with the rest of us: anxiety and self-critique.
His offer reminds me of another high-profile act of “help” from a star: Sean Penn during Hurricane Katrina. Penn brought a film crew into flooded New Orleans, boarded a boat crowded with media and rescuers, and the boat started leaking. At one point, he was seen bailing water with a plastic cup.
I’m not saying Penn lacked motive or compassion, but no matter what, it was a really bad look.
Eisenberg, however, sidesteps that reality because his act is medically serious, private, and purposeful. It’s a non-directed donation, where a stranger receives a kidney, and their compatibility binds them, though they’ll likely never meet.
He shares an understated yet profound resolve, not flaunting it, but just doing it.
What makes this situation more poignant is that we’ve forgotten the muscle of quiet character. In “real” America, neighbors help neighbors without cameras or press kits. During the two world wars, strangers carried each other in acts seldom commemorated.
What Eisenberg is offering has a ring of authentic citizenship, about a bond, not one that is broadcast; it’s about an obligation to one another, not an obligation to self-image.
You can take this lesson into our own world; you don’t have to offer somebody an organ, but you can step outside the frame of the kind of performative kindness the Christmas season brings out, and provide something resolute, uncomfortable, and meaningful.
Character is what you do when nobody is looking. Real heroism sometimes happens in the pre-dawn hours of business-as-usual lives, not on the red carpets. Eisenberg shows that the cost might be inconvenient and without an audience, but the consequence is life.
I’m willing to bet that Jesse Eisenberg’s political and social ideas are 180 degrees away from mine. He may suffer a fatal dose of TDS. I really don’t know, which to me says schmaybe he’s not. In this case, however, I feel it is important to look past all that and give the man his due for doing something humanly good.
So here’s to Jesse Eisenberg’s example by deed, not buzz. It may not be his goal, but his act allows the rest of us to measure our own strides by his, not by celebrity margins, but by margins of sacrifice.
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