Biography

Had the opportunity to audition for Back to the Future, but his family urged him to stay in school.

Actor, acting teacher, and screenwriter living in New York City.

Parents divorced when Zach was 3 years old. Father is a lawyer.

Coincidentally, he and his character Eric Rhodes from Cupid (1997) had February 14 (Valentine's Day) as their birthday.

He is of approximately three quarters Irish descent. Most of the rest of his ancestry is Austrian Jewish (from a maternal great-grandfather) and English.

"There are a lot of tough things to do with the business, I'm completely numb now to rejection. I get rejected for 98 out of 100 things I try for." - On landing acting roles.

(On landing Gremlins) Well the thing that's so weird about Gremlins was that people would think that there was some massive competition for the role. And maybe there was behind the scenes, but as far as I experienced it, I went in and met the casting director Susan Arnold. We had a chat for ten minutes, came back the next day, met the producer Mike Finnell, he apologized and said Joe Dante was sick and couldn't make it, but he really liked my reading. So he wanted to see my reading and then he asked me afterwords if I would come in a couple of days later and screen test. And I said sure. So I came back in and there was Phoebe Cates, and we got paired together. And they put us both on tape and we did it once. And they said thank you very much and left it. I went off for Spring Break, and I was gone a day and a half when I got a call saying you've got to come right back because you've got the part. It was one of the easiest parts I've ever gotten. It just doesn't make any sense.

(On Gremlins 2) There are two reasons why the second movie didn't do as well as the first movie. The first primary reason is the scheduling. It should have come out in May. Instead, they got cocky, they got amazing test scores, and they tried to get it out opposite Dick Tracy. And we got slaughtered because we could not compete with the Warren Beatty/Madonna thing. If he hadn't been dating Madonna, I think we would have probably won. In the 1990s, she was like a supernova we just couldn't get past.

But the other reason that I think is a problem with Gremlins 2 is that I don't think the humans and the Gremlins interact enough. You have a human section, and then you have an all-Gremlin section, and then you have human, then Gremlin. So there are sections of Gremlins 2 where after four or five minutes you're, like, I'm in a Muppet movie. And I think that's a problem. I think if you look at the first Gremlins, the Gremlins and the humans interaction is never lost, they're seamlessly woven together at all times, with maybe a slight exception being the bar scene.

[on Waxwork II: Lost In Time] I'm also particularly proud of all of the stunts I did. I did all of the stunts. If you notice, my character takes a beating in 'Waxwork II.' He gets the shit beat out of him!

[on Waxwork III] It wasn't that I had a problem with a Waxwork III per say, I felt I should kinda stop doing horror movies in general. I feel I was starting to get pigeonholed. And you know what it's like when your young, you feel like "I wanna establish myself as a serious actor!" which I am, and I feel I did do. I just didn't want to keep going back to doing special effects stuff. I wanted to do a few movies where I'm sitting on a couch talking to people about things and relationships.