Life & Work with Zach Lazar Hoffman

Today we’d like to introduce you to Zach Lazar Hoffman.

Hi Zach, so excited to have you with us today. What can you tell us about your story?
I grew up in LA and moved to Nashville young in pursuit of a music career as a drummer in a band with two of my brothers. I am the oldest of 8 kids. My father is a voiceover artist and was since I was about 7. I got married young and had three kids right away, all surprises, then one more 5 years later, they are my heart and my whole world. As my wife and I started having children, the music career got gradually more difficult, and after drama in the band and its dissolution; I was sent into a spiral not knowing what to do.

During that time I worked odd jobs, I had a few voice-over clients and did random work that came in, worked for a pre-blast inspection company, a parking garage, a grocery store, random coffee businesses, went to seminary, went into sales, went to Belmont University and studied commercial Drumming in composition and arranging, then finally a sales job for a health insurance company. So I was at Belmont, I joined 6 different bands, doing bits of voiceover, studying Cello outside of school, and I still took random odd jobs as they came in.

While in sales I was headed toward depression and obesity. It was at that job that I made a pivotal relationship that steered me back towards pursuing my dreams. Voice Acting had already been one of my “odd jobs” that was consistently a portion of my income each year. I never wanted to pursue it before because I thought it would take away from my dream of being a rock star and it was what the “old man” did.

I decided to put attention on a career as a Voice Actor thinking I’d like it because it aligned with my desire to be in the arts and to perform and tell a story. My buddy Dan, who is in that pivotal relationship I mentioned, sat me down and told me this crucial advice that would shape my life and career going forward. He said that it is amazing that I’m shouldering all of the random jobs and bands and schooling that I was committed to. He told me that I have a lot of horsepowers and then he gave me an analogy. He said

“consider the Mississippi river. It’s really wide, right? How quickly does it look like it’s moving? Pretty slowly. Now imagine if you tightened that channel a bit, what would happen? The speed would increase. Now, what if you tightened it a LOT? What would happen?”

This analogy hit me hard. I realized that I was spreading my “horsepower” all around and that If I focused it, I could probably do anything. I made some hard decisions and cut everything out of my life one by one. The bands were hard conversations, leaving school was emotional, and quitting the sales job was scary because it seemed like it was my main “job”. But after putting all of that horsepower into voice acting alone, it was STUNNING how quickly my career took off.

I started booking way more, and I set a goal to be different from my dad who focuses on Narration, Promo, and Commercial work, I wanted to focus on Videogames and Animation. Within 4 months, I booked a leading character in a fan favorite called Five Nights at Freddy’s. Things have only gotten better from there.

After a few more months I realized that all of the biggest roles in video games and animation were going to actors, not solely voice actors. Well, I had NEVER taken an acting class or even read a book. I grew up in LA pining after music and never once even considered acting as a career option.

I started searching for acting studios in Nashville and found The 4th Wall. I got a seat at the beginning of 2017 and I was assigned a scene from the show This is Us. I had NO idea what I was doing, but my scene partner helped me a ton. After performing our first work of that scene I cried. I realized that I had come home. I found the thing I am supposed to do with the rest of my life.

After that, I went ALL IN on acting. I purchased Respect for Acting by Uta Hagen, On Acting by Samford Meisner, and An Actor Prepares by Stanislavsky, then I found another acting coach who would bring my acting to new heights, Corey Parker. Corey’s love for acting is infectious, and I was a new actor eating up everything I could. He had me add Chubbik’s Power of the Actor and Stella Adler’s The Art of Acting to my collection, along with Bolislovsy’s Acting: The First Six Lessons. These books and his training have changed me not just as an actor but as a person.

At this point, I began booking more and more on-camera work. My first was a horror feature film, followed by a national commercial for a cat litter box company called Litter Robot. I’ve had co-star roles in The Resident, Fear the Walking Dead, and National Treasure on Disney +. During this season I added yet another coach to my training regiment named Laura Holloway.

Laura the Studio for Acting here in Nashville has added another dimension to my training and has become an indispensable resource to me in my career. She leads me to study Lee Strasberg and the method. One of her coaches she is proud to have studied with is Tony Greco, who trained the likes of Phillip Seymour Hoffman and David Harbour. Laura introduced me to Tony, and I went and studied with him for a month this past February. This augmented my experience to new heights and depths and has deepened my love and respect for acting.

This brings us to the present, where I am working out of my studio here in Nashville, auditioning and working through my on-camera agent Melinda Eisnaugle at The Avenue Agency. I just finished my first leading role in a feature-length film called “The Bigfoot Trap”, which we wrapped yesterday as of this writing.

I am a humbled and grateful husband and father, dedicated to the art of acting, committed to the process of storytelling by becoming another and giving performances that demonstrate the broken and beautiful state of humanity, with the goal of changing lives for the good.

Can you talk to us a bit about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way? Looking back would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
It was very difficult deciding what to do and choose acting over music. Making the jump from a “safe” sales job to full-time voiceover.

Where we are in life is often partly because of others. Who/what else deserves credit for how your story turned out?
Sasha Hoffman – my wife, without whom non of what I do could even be possible.
Dave Hoffman (my dad and master voiceover artist).
Dan Eddington (the “pivotal relationship I mentioned).
Corey Parker.
Laura Holloway.
Tony Greco.

Contact Info:

• Website: zachhoffmanvoice.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/zachhoffman/
• Facebook: @zachhoffmanvoice