Omri Katz Played Max on Hocus Pocus, Then He Left Trial and Followed the Grateful Dead for 5 Years

Omri Katz left Hollywood at the age of 26, after almost two decades on camera, and when he tried to come back the love was gone.

He rose to fame at the age of 7 as John Ross Ewing III on Dallas in 1983, playing JR and Sue Ellen’s son in about 133 episodes over eight years. At age 15, he hosted the NBC cult series Eerie, Indiana, which ran for one season from 1991 to 1993. In 1993 he also played Stan in Joe Dante’s Matinee opposite John Goodman, which was a huge box office hit.

That same year, at the age of 17, he landed the role of Max Dennison in Kenny Ortega’s Hocus Pocus, a role that a young Leonardo DiCaprio was also in the running for.

He also admitted that he was at a high level in parts of the shot. “Let’s just say, some of those scenes, I had a good old time,” he told Entertainment Weekly, recalling “not doing well and not hitting my keys or marks” until Ortega finally asked if he was stoned. “I was like, ‘No,’ and of course, I was.”

It wasn’t long before he left. “I grew up in this industry, so that’s all I knew,” he told former Eerie bandmate Justin Shenkarow on the Bronx Buds YouTube channel. “I think I was looking for a soul and I wanted more of a human experience; just see what else is out there, see the world, and be normal. I didn’t have that growing up.”

The source calls what followed as a “party group.” He followed the Grateful Dead on tour for nearly five years, spent five seasons in Jackson Hole skating, waited tables, and worked for eight years as a hairstylist at an upscale salon in Los Angeles.

When he tried to come back, it just fell apart. “I’ve done it a few times and I like, you know, the episodes. I liked Freaks and Geeks, General Hospital,” he told Est. On the 90s podcast in September 2025. He kept throwing lines and chilling. “I had a strange mental block that I couldn’t do.”

“I wanted to get back into acting for the wrong reasons… to make money so I could jump again, and that didn’t work out,” he said. I had to get a real job, the first in my life.

His last credit was a short film in 2002. In 2020 he briefly brought back Max with Bette Midler’s fundraising video, and later that year launched a brand of cannabis, The Mary Danksters, with the slogan “positivity, herb and unity.” He publicly supported Hocus Pocus 2 in 2022 but was not in it.

He’s 50 now, lives in the Los Angeles area, works on the 90s and horror convention circuit, and takes Cameo bookings; so you know, you can go order a video from your friend who is obsessed with Hocus Pocus.

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