‘Every day is 24 hours of panic to just get out the door’: Jesse Eisenberg on self-indulgence, candid aunts and his Oscar-tipped Holocaust comedy

‘I usually do a eugenics test before I work with someone’ … Kieran Culkin and Jesse Eisenberg. Photograph: Taylor Jewell/Invision/AP

Jesse Eisenberg and Kieran Culkin are in complete agreement. People being more open about everyday anguish is a good thing. Absolutely. One hundred per cent.

Not them, though. They will continue to button up. “I know my pain is unexceptional,” says Eisenberg, words clattering out of him like a runaway train, “so I don’t feel the need to burden everybody with it. I have OCD and general anxiety disorder and bad things happen to me, but I’ll never talk about them because I don’t want that kind of attention.”