He appeared in two early vehicles for sports star Snowy Baker, The Enemy Within (1918), and The Lure of the Bush (1918), as well as movies from directors Raymond Longford, Franklyn Barrett, Paulette McDonagh, and Beaumont Smith.
He befriended a young Oscar Asche and the two of them travelled the English countryside selling a fridge that Faulkner had invented.
While in New York he received an offer to act opposite Ethel Barrymore but turned it down to return to England, where he started making films.
Historian Graham Shirley wrote that "as an actor, his most distinctive roles were those of the refined heavy, but he also played a gallery of indulgent or put-upon fathers.
Faulkner's work in silent film impressed executives at MGM in Hollywood and they offered him a contract, but it was conditional on a medical test and by that stage he had had two strokes and his blood pressure was high.
Trader later claimed that his father started drinking heavily from 1932 onwards and suffered major financial difficulties.