Jesse Eisenberg is now a Polish citizen. Days after Keiran Culkin took home the Best Supporting Actor award at the 2025 Oscars for A Real Pain on Sunday (March 3), Eisenberg, who wrote, directed and starred in the film alongside Culkin, has been granted Polish citizenship by President Andrezj Duda in a ceremony in New York on Tuesday (March 4).
The film follows two cousins, David (Eisenberg) and Benji Kaplan (Keiran Culkin), who reconnect while travelling to Poland to honour their grandmother, a Holocaust survivor. Poland allows citizenship for those with immediate family members born in Poland or lived there after 1920, and Eisenberg applied for Polish citizenship after filming the movie.
"This is an honour of a lifetime," Eisenberg shared during the ceremony via a video from RadioRAPA. "This is something I have been very interested in for two decades."
Eisenberg, who was nominated for Best Original Screenplay at the Oscars, was inspired to write A Real Pain after the death of his great aunt Doris in 2019. Doris grew up in Poland, but fled to the US in 1938, where she later died at the age of 106. Other members of Eisenberg's family who remained in Poland were killed during the Holocaust.
During his citizenship ceremony, Eisenberg shared, "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. And of course, the history ended so tragically."
He added, "In addition to that tragedy of history is 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. And I really hope that tonight and this ceremony and this amazing honour is the first step for me and my family to reconnect with this beautiful country."
"I am delighted that people from across the ocean acknowledge their heritage, recognize that their ancestors hail from the Republic [of Poland] and seek to forge a connection with our country," President Duda shared.
Watch Eisenberg's speech below.