ARTS AND CULTURE

Jesse Eisenberg

Actor

Actor and writer Jesse Eisenberg discovered a haunting personal connection with the legendary French Jewish mime artist Marcel Marceau when he played the role of Marceau in the movie “Resistance.” Marceau – who was born Marcel Mangel – began aiding efforts to rescue Jewish children when he was 15, just a few years older than many of the children whom he saved. His own father was murdered at Auschwitz. Said Eisenberg: “My family comes from a part of Poland that is very close to where Marceau’s father came from in south-eastern Poland, so in some ways, it felt like I was playing somebody who, were I born with the same genetic makeup but 70 years earlier, I would be him.” (Photo: Wikimedia / Creative Commons License)