bitchy | Jesse Eisenberg is scheduled to donate a kidney to a stranger in December

Jesse Eisenberg has grown on me so much in recent years. I used to think he was rather cold and pretentious, but maybe he just always had a dry sense of humor. Maybe he’s just lightened up as he’s gotten older. I was so impressed with his work in A Real Pain, which he wrote, directed and starred in… and then he watched as Kieran Culkin won award after award for the movie. Anyway, Jesse is currently promoting Now You See Me: Now You Don’t, and he appeared on the Today Show on Thursday. Craig Melvin praised Jesse for being a long-time blood donor and blood-drive organizer, and Jesse revealed something major: he’s about to donate a kidney.

Jesse Eisenberg is donating a kidney to a stranger, calling it a “no-brainer.”

The Now You See Me: Now You Don’t star, 42, shared the news while recalling his participation in a Today show-sponsored blood drive over the summer. “I just have so much blood in me, and I feel like I should spill it,” Eisenberg quipped during an Oct. 30 appearance on the NBC morning show. “I really like doing it, and I don’t know why.”

“I’m actually donating my kidney in six weeks. I really am,” Eisenberg shared.

“That’s amazing,” host Craig Melvin said.

Eisenberg explained that “I got, like, bitten by the blood donation bug. I love it.”

“That’s a big jump up,” Melvin commented.

“I’m doing an altruistic donation [in] mid-December,” Eisenberg said.

An altruistic donation — also known as a non-directed living donation — is when someone donates an organ to a stranger, Weill Cornell Medicine explains. The recipient is selected by medical compatibility.

“It’s essentially risk-free and so needed,” Eisenberg told TODAY.com separately. “I think people will realize that it’s a no-brainer, if you have the time and the inclination.”

The dad to son Banner, 8, said that by becoming a donor, his family would be prioritized in the future should they ever need a living kidney donation, via the National Kidney Foundation’s family voucher program. “The way it works now is you can put a list of whoever you would like to be the first to be at the top of the list. So it’s risk-free for my family, as well.”

After a kidney donation, most donors are able to resume their normal activities within 2 to 4 weeks, the Mayo Clinic explains. Approximately 5,000 living kidney donations are performed annually in the U.S.

[From People]

Jesse “said that by becoming a donor, his family would be prioritized in the future should they ever need a living kidney donation, via the National Kidney Foundation’s family voucher program.” I had no idea that program existed! Because that would be my concern about donating a kidney – what happens if I only have one and it goes kaput? If you’ve donated a kidney, you and your family get prioritized with the family voucher program. They should really publicize that, because that alone would probably guarantee more altruistic kidney donations. As for Jesse’s selflessness… it’s remarkable. He gets a pass forever, actually. What a truly lovely thing to do.

Photos courtesy of Avalon Red, Cover Images.