Handsome Australian actor Aden Young was identified as a hot property early in his career, but shied away from roles that would earn him greater fame, instead opting for parts in smaller Australian films. Brown-haired, with pleasant features and a suggestive mischief in his eyes, Young's charisma and charm shone through his portrayals and gave even the nastiest of characters a compelling dimensionality, rendering them almost likable. The young actor made his big screen debut co-starring as a 17th Century French carpenter boy working as translator and guide to a Jesuit missionary priest in the Canadian wilderness in Bruce Beresford's "Black Robe" (1991). This debut performance exhibited his intuitive approach to acting, and garnered notice and acclaim. The following year, he was featured in the Australian production "Over the Hill", a movie chronicling the cross-country travels of a freewheeling grandmother.
Young's next project was the more mainstream action thriller "Sniper" (1993), co-starring alongside American actors Tom Berenger, Billy Zane and J T Walsh. That same year he amassed credits with featured roles in the Australian films "Love in Limbo", "Broken Highway", and "Shotgun Wedding", which gained him experience and domestic recognition if not worldwide fame. In 1994, he starred in the odd drama "Exile", playing a man sentenced to an isolated island after being convicted of stealing sheep. There he is joined by a young woman with whom he falls in love and awaits a child, only to be found out and persecuted. That same year the love quadrangle drama "Metal Skin" was released to raves in Australia (although its US release was held up until 1999).
1996 saw the actor turn in several notable performances, including his acclaimed turn in "River Street" as an ambitious and somewhat ruthless real estate executive. Young took a supporting role in the touching comedy "Cosi", playing the spiteful friend of an aspiring theater director ("Metal Skin" co-star Ben Mendelsohn) hired to steer a production of Mozart's "Cosi Fan Tutte" in a mental hospital. Young's role was relatively small but his appealing portrayal of a two-faced pal was among the most memorable in the film. He then took the lead in "Hotel de Love", starring as Rick Dunne, the jaded manager of an especially tacky Australian honeymoon hotel who becomes reacquainted with a former lover (Saffron Burrows). Young went on to co-star in the period drama "Cousin Bette" (1998), a strangely comedic adaptation of Honore de Balzac's classic novel. As Wencenslas, the down-on-his-luck sculptor rescued by Jessica Lange's spinster title character, he serves at the catalyst of Bette's dramatic rage. After being redeemed by Bette (who fancies that he should become her lover), Wencenslas becomes quite the playboy, falling in love with the young and privileged Hortense Hulot (a member of Bette's own family), and taking up with courtesan Jenny, Bette's only friend. That same year he again tackled an adaptation of a literary classic, this time as star of "Under Heaven", a modern reworking of Henry James' "The Wings of the Dove". Co-starring Joely Richardson and Molly Parker, the film was a capable retelling, served well by Young's consistently multidimensional portrayals of men of ambiguous morality.