FEATURE STORY

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It’s been said that a life lived in fear is a life half lived. Corey Stoll would disagree. But then again, he’s a klutz. And when you’re a klutz with a bald head (his words, not mine), there isn’t much room for error.

Needless to say, he’s not much of a risk-taker. “I mean, I won’t ski because I’m afraid of breaking my leg and not being able to work,” he confides, sharing that he hit the slopes as a kid, but as an adult, he wouldn’t dare. “Since I started acting professionally, I’ve been terrified. I’m such a klutz! I’m like, ‘It would be so much fun, but if I fell and broke my leg, I’d be just screwed for months.’”

He seems like a capable, sturdy dude at six foot two, so I admit to being a little surprised and ask for a recent example of said klutziness.

Stoll accommodates. “I was in a hotel room that had a spiral staircase in it that was right in front of a window, and I just started walking toward it and almost knocked myself unconscious, just hitting the bottom of a stone staircase,” he shares, adding, “And yeah, when you have a bald head, it’s hard to hide a big bump. I hit my head a lot, but the combination of being tall and bald leaves little room for error.”

Ouch. Though constant (yet unintentional) personal harm mandates that perhaps adventure-seeking isn’t in the cards, let the record show that, professionally at least, Stoll is one hell of a risk-taker — even when that risk is something as arbitrary as pretending to be in love with someone you’re just not that into. “I remember doing a scene in acting school where I was supposed to fall in love, and I remember struggling because I was just not personally attracted to this person. And then at a certain point, I realized that I was just creating an obstacle for myself. I was passing up this incredible opportunity to fall in love — for the brief moment that I’m playing this scene, experience what it feels like to actually fall in love — and why would I deny myself that?” he recalls. “That’s something I’ve reminded myself about a lot: commitment when you’re acting. We live our lives in a very sort of narrow band; we try not to feel the highs and lows too much, because we have to get through the day. But when you’re acting, you get to go there in a safe way and feel the power of faking it ’til you make it.”

It’s true that he clothes himself in new characters the way many people buy pants; he’s acted in more than 70 projects, spanning film, television and theater, in less than 20 years. Most recently, he appeared as Police Lieutenant Schrank in Steven Spielberg’s West Side Story remake alongside Ansel Elgort, Rachel Zegler and Rita Moreno in December, which followed his turn as Junior Soprano in the Sopranos prequel The Many Saints of Newark. I wonder if he had any apprehension about the enormity of tackling roles in such iconic projects, to which he responds with a laugh, “Probably less than there should have been! I think in general, for an actor, when you get an offer, it’s like Christmas morning. It’s all I can really see when I’m invited to be a part of something that’s well written, dynamic, fun and funny. All I can think is, That looks like fun. It looks like a fun group of people to play with, it looks like a fun character to play, a fun world to inhabit. And it’s really only really afterwards, when I’m done filming it and promoting it, that I start to realize the expectations behind it. So I think that’s probably a good thing, that I don’t tend to get too nervous about it while I’m doing it. Luckily these jobs are so time consuming — there’s just too much work to do while you’re actually doing it to really get nervous, I find.”

Another thing I learn about Stoll is that he gets bored very easily — which is why his résumé is so diverse. His most memorable roles to date include congressman Peter Russo on Netflix’s House of Cards, Darren Cross/Yellowjacket in Marvel’s Ant-Man, Dr. Ephraim Goodweather on the FX horror series The Strain, prosecutor Fred Wyshak in Black Mass, astronaut Buzz Aldrin in the biopic First Man and Ernest Hemingway in Midnight in Paris, which earned him an Independent Spirit Award

Corey Stoll (top) as Michael Prince with Daniel Breaker as Scooter Dunbar and (bottom) with Asia Kate Dillon as Taylor Mason on Billions.

nomination. His theater work includes a variety of Shakespeare — the title role in Macbeth, Marcus Brutus in Julius Caesar and Iago in Othello — as well as his award-winning turn as Ulysses in Troilus and Cressida and a Drama Desk-nominated part in Lynn Nottage’s Intimate Apparel.

Regarding variety being his particular spice of life, he says, “I think I’m excited by challenge. If I’m offered a role and I perceive that it’s something I’ve done before, it’s hard for me to say yes, because it’s just a little boring. In general, probably one of the most common questions actors are asked is, ‘What is your favorite medium?’ It’s an impossible question for me to answer, because I’m excited by variety, so often it’s whatever I didn’t just do. If I just did a movie, I’m super excited to do a play. If I just did a play, I’ll want to do film or TV.”

This includes his three most recent projects, too, of course. They’re totally different. He explains, “In Billions, it’s this incredible sense of continuity and being able to tell a story over a long period of time, to be able to inhabit this character. When we got the script for the final episode of season six, I found all this stuff about my character that I didn’t even really know, and it adds this new layer. That’s really exciting, on one level. Showing up on the set for West Side Story and getting to work with a master [Steven Spielberg] — somebody whose films I’ve been watching since I started watching movies, someone who’s defined storytelling for generations — was joyful. And then, to be a part of the Sopranos world, which is so smart and funny and such a rich mythology, that was engaging, too.”

When I comment on his banner year — which also includes the HBO limited series Scenes from a Marriage with Jessica Chastain and Oscar Isaac — he laughs, admitting, “It’s nice! Whatever will allow me to keep working and to keep doing interesting things is good. 2020 was really rough for everybody. For the film and television and theater industry it was particularly hard, because for a good chunk of it, nobody was working. It was awful to not be able to do the thing that brings us so much joy. So if people like the work I’m doing and want to, you know, keeping hiring me, that will be good.”

He probably shouldn’t lose any sleep over this. If anything, he has too little free time on his hands these days (not that he’s complaining). “The greatest luxury for me at this point is being able to sit for hours reading a novel. My life right now exists of being on set, memorizing lines or watching my son. If I can find a couple of hours to sit and read, that’s just heaven.”

And the pants, Corey. Never forget the luxury of cashmere pants.