Ciaran Brown meets actor Nick Stahl

Nick Stahl & Sissy Spacek in In The Bedroom

Nick Stahl

Twist (2003), a strange update of Charles Dicken's Oliver Twist story (set in the dark world of Vancouver's sex and drugs industry) was Stahl's next film, for which he was nominated for a Genie, the main national film award in Canada.

Nick Stahl is now very much in demand with four completed films to his name in 2007 - How to Rob a Bank, Sleepwalking, Quid Pro Quo and The Speed of Thought. This talented actor looks set to run up an impressive total over the coming years.

Nick Stahl's next film, Sin City (2005), starring Bruce Willis, saw him in the dual role of Roark Junior who mutates into Yellow Bastard after being shot. Roark recovers but with severe side effects including bright yellow skin. With Quentin Tarantino as a guest director, violence and bloodshed are guaranteed. For the mutation, Stahl required extensive make-up, including a full body and facial prosthetic, bald hair and body paint.

I asked him about Terminator 4 and he said he'd like to be in it but wasn't sure that he would!

In 2003, Stahl embarked on his first recurring role in a TV series when he appeared as a teenage fugitive, Ben Hawkins, in Carnivale. Hawkins joins a carnival as it travels across the Oklahoma dust bowl in the 1930s.

Nick Stahl's successes up to 2003 were mostly in low-budget, independent films, but then this all changed as he took on the role of John Connors in Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines starring Arnold Schwarzenegger as The Terminator.

Bully (2001) saw Nick Stahl cast as a violent young bully called Bobby Kent, whose actions so appal his friends that they hatch a plot to murder him.

Another film nominated for an Academy Award was In The Bedroom (2000) with Nick Stahl playing a teenager who falls for an older woman.

Nick Stahl's career took a big step forward when he was cast in the role of Private Beade, a young soldier in The Thin Red Line (1998). The film was a huge box-office success and had many nominations for Academy Awards.

Stahl was chosen by Mel Gibson to star in his directoral debut film The Man Without a Face (1993) and this paved the way for a succession of roles for this teenage actor. In 1994 came Safe Passage with Susan Sarandon; another TV film Incident in a Small Town with Walter Mattau and a Disney film Tall Tale, in which he plays a boy who time-travels back to the American Wild West.

He was only ten when he won his first professional role in the TV film Stranger at my Door (1991), quickly followed by another for TV A Woman with a Past (1992).

Nick Stahl was born in Harlington, Texas, in 1979. He grew up in Dallas, and when only four years old began acting there in the local theatre.

I met Nick Stahl at Collectormania held at Milton Keynes in October 2005. He signed my John Conway limited edition 'Terminated' print and also a photo from Terminator 3.