This talented, quirky performer has successfully made the transition from juvenile to adult feature roles. Noah Taylor honed his talents as a child actor on stage with the St. Martin's Youth Theater in Melbourne where he appeared in "Pierrot Lunnaire", "Alien in the Park" and "Eric and Verna". He segued to features with Richard Lowenstein's "Dogs in Space" (1986), which focused on several young people sharing a house in Melbourne. The dark-haired elfin actor landed his first leading role in John Duigan's semi-autobiographical "The Year My Voice Broke" (1987). As Danny Embling, a youth coming to terms with his burgeoning sexuality, he functioned for the director in much the same way that Jean-Pierre Leaud did for Francois Truffaut. He reprised the role in Duigan's "Flirting" (1990), which focused on Danny's romance with an African student (Thandi Newton). Duigan has been developing a third feature for several years.
Once established as a leading juvenile actor, Taylor continued to appear in a number of well-received Australian features including Geoffrey Wright's "Lover Boy" (1989), as youth involved in a doomed love affair. He was a virginal youth covering his inexperience with a tough exterior and fake Liverpudlian accent in the Jan Sardi-scripted "Secrets" (1992), which local critics favorably compared with the American films "I Wanna Hold Your Hand" (1978) and "The Breakfast Club" (1985). As "The Nostradamus Kid" (1993), Taylor outshone the material which critics found confusing and misogynistic. He inspired the film's director Bob Ellis to proclaim that Taylor would function as his screen alter ego (although the two have not worked together again as of 1997). On the small screen, Taylor was featured as Julie Christie's son in "Dadah Is Death" (CBS, 1988) and alongside Nicole Kidman in "Bangkok Hilton" (TBS, 1990). Additionally, he has appeared in several Australian-made TV-movies, the BBC-produced "The Boys From the Bush" and "Inspector Morse: Promised Land" (PBS, 1993).
In 1995, Taylor displayed his broad comic abilities as the youngest child in a turn-of-the-century family carving a life in the bush in "Dad and Dave - On Our Selection.” The film co-starred Geoffrey Rush who played the adult to Taylor's teenaged musician David Helfgott in Scott Hicks' biopic "Shine" (1996)—the two actors would also cameo in the Australian miniseries "Frontier" (1997). In "Shine" Taylor earned international attention for his performance as a high-strung, mentally-troubled piano prodigy who suffers an onstage breakdown that interrupts his performing career for years. Taylor soon found himself cast in leading roles in smaller independent features such as "Simon Magus" (1999), in which he played a Jewish outcast who is believed to converse with the devil, and supporting turns in major American films like writer-director Cameron Crowe's semi-autobiographical "Almost Famous" (2000) in which he played the put-upon but resourceful band manager Dick Roswell. He then reunited with Crowe in a small but pivotal role for the murkier meditation "Vanilla Sky" (2001) and snared a highly visible (and commercial) role as Angelina Jolie's trusty sidekick Bryce in the video game adaptation "Lara Croft: Tomb Raider" (2001), a character he reprised for the sequel "Lara Croft Tomb Raider: The Cradle of Life" (2003).
Taylor's acting depths, however, weren't pushed to their limits again until "Max" (2002), writer-director Menno Meyjes' controversial exploration of the edgy relationship between a youthful, impoverished, artistic Adolph Hitler (Taylor) and a one-armed Jewish art dealer Max Rothman. Taylor earned critical plaudits for playing a very human proto-version of the Hitler history knows and despises without delving into caricature or cartoon. After a supporting turn in “The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou” (2004), he appeared in Tim Burton’s remake, “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory” (2005), starring a Michael Jackson-like Johnny Depp as the reclusive chocolatier. He next had a supporting role in Terrance Malick’s “The New World” (2005), a lyrical, but ultimately meandering take on the settlement at Jamestown, Virginia in 1607 and the ensuing love affair between Captain John Smith (Colin Farrell) and a young Native American girl, Pocahontas (Q’Orianka Kilcher).