Stielstra moved to NYC after college, where he acted on "Saturday Night Live" during the 1993 TV season.

In Los Angeles, he endured background work in "Boogie Nights" and "Saved By The Bell" until landing a line in the Tom Cruise film, "Jerry Maguire". In 2012, Stielstra starred in the western "The Scarlet Worm" while narrating and co-scoring the Mike Malloy documentary, "Eurocrime!", a documentary about poliziotteschi that received a rave write-up in Variety magazine and premiered at the Chinese Theater in Hollywood, 2014.

Stielstra moved to Italy in 2012. From 2014-2019, Stielstra appeared in 3 westerns ("Six Bullets to Hell", "The Price of Death", and "The Bounty Killer")--all shot in Spain--and contributed to their soundtracks. He played Niccolo' Macchiavelli in the PBS film "The Mona Lisa Myth", narrated by Morgan Freeman, and worked 3 seasons of the Disney TV show "Penny on MARS". He additionally completed 4 supernatural horror films, including "The Curse of the Blind Dead", where he fought the Italian Sean Connery, Fabio Testi.

The punk-rock comedy "Excretion: The Shocking True Story of The Football Moms" (2019), written, directed, and starring Stielstra, is a testament to wet-brain depravity. In between film and TV work, he plays guitar for children's storytimes in libraries and continues directing grotesque comedies ("Less Human Than Human III" and the upcoming "Weber Falls, USA").

Recently, Stielstra acted in the mini-series "Catch-22", "American Night", with John Rhys Meyers and Emile Hirsch, and "They Talk" with Rocio Morales. In 2022 he completed an international Smart Car commercial in Barcelona and soon appears in Batgirl.

Stielstra has provided soundtracks for over 20 films. He has performed in the punk rock band The Distortionists and now performs in the band War, Covid and Trump.