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" &amp;quot;No,&amp;quot; Corey Stoll says when asked if he could take Ernest Hemingway in the ring. &amp;quot;I&amp;#039;ve got the reach on him. I&amp;#039;m a few inches taller. But he actually boxed. Plus, I can handle losing a lot easier than he can.&amp;quot; A third-generation New Yorker who attended the performing-arts LaGuardia High School \u2014 inspiration for the &amp;#039;80s film Fame \u2014 and NYU&amp;#039;s Graduate Acting Program, Stoll, 36, hasn&amp;#039;t suffered too many knockdowns in his career. &amp;quot;Looking back, I was very naive about how it was going to be. In some ways my na\u00EFvet\u00E9 was an asset. I should&amp;#039;ve been more worried. I should&amp;#039;ve had less confidence. Because regardless of how good you are, the odds are against you.&amp;quot; He&amp;#039;s done Broadway with Scarlett Johansson and Off Broadway with Viola Davis; shared the big screen with Angelina Jolie, Charlize Theron, and Jeremy Renner; and appeared alongside Alfred Molina and Terrence Howard in NBC&amp;#039;s fleeting Law &amp;amp;amp; Order: Los Angeles. But he&amp;#039;s by far best known for his turn as Hemingway in Woody Allen&amp;#039;s 2011 blockbuster comedy Midnight in Paris.  The role earned him an Independent Spirit Award nomination and had some thinking he&amp;#039;d be an Oscar contender. (His most memorable line in the film \u2014 &amp;quot;Who wants to fight?&amp;quot; \u2014 was improvised.) But because he wore a wig \u2014 and in real life shaves his head \u2014 Stoll is rarely recognized. &amp;quot;Right now, it&amp;#039;s perfect,&amp;quot; he says. &amp;quot;I can walk down the street and nobody knows who I am.&amp;quot;  That could easily change now that Netflix has just premiered its first original series House of Cards, out today. The show is remarkable both for its unique distribution \u2014 all thirteen episodes of the first season are available at once \u2014 and marquee talent. Executive produced by David Fincher (who also directed the first two episodes) and written by Academy Award-nominated screenwriter Beau Willimon, it stars Kevin Spacey as a politician out for revenge after being passed over for a cabinet post, with Robin Wright as his Lady Macbeth.  Stoll plays third-term Philadelphia congressman Peter Russo, a key pawn in the scheme. &amp;quot;He has the natural appetite of Clinton,&amp;quot; Stoll says of his character, who has a weakness for whiskey, cocaine, and call girls. &amp;quot;But he doesn&amp;#039;t have the pain threshold. He&amp;#039;s more like Spitzer and Weiner. Our political consultant, Jay Carson [press secretary for the presidential bids of Howard Dean and Hillary Clinton], said scandals are like having a trashcan over your head and somebody banging on it. It&amp;#039;s unpleasant, but it will pass. Clinton knows he&amp;#039;ll live to see another day. Weiner and Spitzer say, &amp;#039;uncle.&amp;#039;&amp;quot; If the premise of House of Cards sounds reminiscent of another Beltway series, think a different angle. &amp;quot;It&amp;#039;s the anti-West Wing,&amp;quot; Stoll says. &amp;quot;There&amp;#039;s a lot about bills and stuff, but that&amp;#039;s sort of peripheral. It&amp;#039;s not about ideology. It&amp;#039;s about power.&amp;quot; Stoll is getting a little more power of his own in Hollywood. In addition to House of Cards \u2014 set to film its second season soon \u2014 he can be seen in the recent Sundance entry C.O.G. and the Liam Neeson action-thriller Non-Stop, out later this year. He also just landed his first lead role \u2014 as, of all things, a washed-up boxer in the indie Glass Chin, currently in production and co-starring Billy Crudup and Kelly Lynch. But Stoll isn&amp;#039;t taking anything for granted. &amp;quot;I don&amp;#039;t feel secure at all. I don&amp;#039;t know what actor would feel they&amp;#039;ve made it. I feel like I&amp;#039;m just starting.&amp;quot; Follow The Culture Blog on RSS and on Twitter at @ESQCulture. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
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