Actor, writer, director Jesse Eisenberg is now officially a Polish citizen, Variety reported. The Now You See Me star was granted citizenship by Polish President Andrzej Duda in a New York ceremony on Tuesday. This is shortly after Eisenberg’s film A Real Pain in which he and Kieran Culkin play American cousins, won Culkin an Oscar for Best Supporting Actor. “I’m so unbelievably honored,” Eisenberg said in a speech at the ceremony. “This is an honor of a lifetime and something I have been very interested in for two decades.” In A Real Pain, Eisenberg and Culkin take a trip to Poland to honor their late Holocaust survivor grandmother—a story he wrote based on his own life after the death of his great aunt, in 2019, who fled Poland in 1938. After filming the movie in Poland, Eisenberg felt inspired to apply for a citizenship. “While we were filming this movie in Poland and I was walking the streets and starting to get a little more comfortable in the country, something so obvious occurred to me, which is that my family had lived in this place far longer than we’ve lived in New York,” Eisenberg said. “And of course, the history ended so tragically, but in addition to that tragedy of history was also the tragedy that my family didn’t feel any connection anymore to Poland. And that saddened me and confirmed for me that I really wanted to try to reconnect as much as possible.” He concluded, “I really hope that tonight and this ceremony and this amazing honor is the first step in me, on behalf of my family, reconnecting to this beautiful country.”
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