‘Dallas’ Child Star Appears Unrecognizable in Rare Photo at 50

The Walt Disney Company A former child star has reemerged looking completely unrecognizable decades after he rose to fame in Dallas and Hocus Pocus .

Omri Katz, who left Hollywood in 2002 and later joined the cannabis industry, reunited with his Hocus Pocus co-stars Thora Birch and Vinessa Shaw at Fan Expo Chicago on August 15, more than three decades after the trio battled the Sanderson sisters on screen.

Katz, 50, appeared at the Fan Expo Chicago convention with a full beard that made him look unrecognizable from the fresh-faced teenager who accidentally unleashed three witches in the 1993 Halloween classic.

The actor was just 17 when Hocus Pocus was released, but he was already deep into Hollywood.

He got his start as John Ross Ewing III on the long-running CBS soap opera Dallas , playing the son of scheming oil tycoon J.R.

Ewing from 1983 to 1991.

As John Ross, Katz was at the center of the dysfunctional Ewing family, growing up amid the betrayals and feuds that made Dallas one of television’s biggest soaps.

He followed that run with a starring role as Marshall Teller on the sci-fi series Eerie, Indiana , before landing the part that would ultimately make him a Halloween icon.

In Hocus Pocus , Katz played Max Dennison, a teenage transplant to Salem, Massachusetts, who accidentally resurrects the Sanderson witches—Winifred (Bette Midler), Sarah (Sarah Jessica Parker), and Mary (Kathy Najimy)—after lighting the Black Flame Candle on Halloween night.

Katz also appeared in The John Larroquette Show, Freaks and Geeks, and General Hospital, and reprised his Dallas character in the 1996 television movie Dallas: J.R.

Returns.

But by the early 2000s, Katz had left Hollywood behind.

His final credited role was in the 2002 short film Journey Into Night .

In a 2022 interview with Bloody Disgusting , Katz said he wanted to experience life outside Hollywood after growing up in the entertainment industry.