Jesse Eisenberg won the Golden Raspberry for Worst Supporting Actor for playing Lex Luthor in 2016’s Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, and he says that one trophy rerouted his whole career.

Asked at the BFI London Film Festival on Sunday, October 18, why he moved into writing and directing around that time, the Social Network star traced it back to the Razzie. “A lot of it just came from fear,” he said. “I couldn’t get into movie studio parts anymore because I had won a Raspberry Award from [being in the] Batman movie.”

He described acting as an industry with no steady middle ground. “If you’re an actor, you’re constantly panicked about: ‘Am I on an upslope or a downslope?’ Because there’s no plateau,” he said, calling it “this unstable, awful industry where you are either on the treadmill and you’re doing okay and you’re running up or you are yesterday’s news.”

So he started building a fallback. “I’ve got to direct movies. That’s why I started writing them, just to kind of keep my career afloat, really,” he said.

He also ruled out ever returning to a superhero movie, reading the Razzie as a clear message. “The industry did not want me to be in a superhero movie, and if you’re smart and self-aware, you learn that quickly,” he said. “They wouldn’t have given you a Raspberry Award if they wanted you there. That’s an award for bad acting.”