This appealing actor began as a child performer and successfully negotiated puberty to become an engaging young adult lead and character player. Texas native Nick Stahl started performing in his hometown of Dallas and found work in local TV commercials and on stage. Spotted by a talent agent, he soon made his primetime acting debut as Robert Urich's son in the CBS thriller "Stranger at My Door" (1991) and went on to appear in "Woman with a Past" (NBC, 1992) before nabbing his first film role when actor-director Mel Gibson cast him as a troubled adolescent who agrees to be tutored by a reclusive, disfigured former teacher in "The Man Without a Face" (1993). Although the finished film bore little resemblance to the original novel, Stahl earned critical praise for his work.
For much of his early teens, Stahl alternated between features and TV, and excelled at playing either sensitive teens or traumatized youths. He was a victim of abuse in both "Incident in a Small Town" (CBS, 1994) and "Blue River" (Fox, 1995) while the feature "Tall Tale: The Adventures of Pecos Bill" (1995) allowed the actor the opportunity to play a more proactive hero, a dreamer who gets to interact with famous figures of myth and legend. In the Southern Gothic "Eye of God" (1997), he was well-cast as a teenager who may have witnessed -- or participated in -- a murder. The rising talent gave a fine supporting performance as a rebellious teen who becomes convinced something is wrong with his peers in the thriller "Disturbing Behavior" (1998).
He went on to appear in the ensemble of Terrence Malik's lyrical remake of "The Thin Red Line" (1998) and essay an aspiring musician in the little-seen "Sunset Strip" (2000). 2001 proved to be a banner year for Stahl, who had roles in two acclaimed Sundance-screened independents. In "The Sleepy Time Gal", he portrayed the son of cancer-stricken writer (Jacqueline Bisset) while "In the Bedroom" cast him as the murdered son of a New England couple. (Todd McCarthy in his January 25, 2001 review in Daily Variety wrote: "... Frank's departure from the story leaves a major void -- for the viewer as well as for the character's family. This is the greatest compliment that can be paid to young actor Stahl ...") Later that same year, he offered a chilling portrait of a an abusive friend and sexual predator in the based-on-fact "Bully". Although director Larry Clark tended to fetishize his young cast, Stahl was particularly memorable as Bobby Kent, once again proving that he was indeed one to watch in the new millennium. His next projext came in the form of the independent feature "Taboo" (2002) a horror that centered around a college game that eventually turned deadly. The following year, Stahl joined Arnold Schwarzenegger for the highly anticipated summer's box office annihilator "Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines," assuming the role of the now-adult John Connor, future leader of the fight against the earth's mechanical masters. He then starred in the offbeat HBO series "Carnivale" (2003- ), a Depression Era drama that cast him as Ben Hawkins, a fugitive with powerful healing abilities who seeks refuge among a traveling carnival run by an unseen management with sinister designs on him.
Stahl then landed the plumb role of Junior Roarke a.k.a. The Yellow Bastard in the "That Yellow Bastard" sequence within director Robert Rodriguez and writer-artist Frank Miller's visually arresting adaptation of Miller's crime noir comic book series "Sin City" (2005). After the cop Hartigan (Bruce Willis) effects vicious justice on the pedophile/murderer Junior, Stahl efectively emoted as he played the reminder of the film in heavy prosthetics designed to match Miller's comic book visualization of the diseased, jaundiced killer.