Before finding his calling as an actor, Evan Hofer dreamed of a different kind of stardom. “My whole life, I was going to be 6’5” and play in the NBA,” he explains. “But once it appeared I was not going to grow anymore” — for the record, he fell six inches short of his height goal — “I realized I needed to find some other interests.”
It was actually his older sister’s artistic ambitions that first prompted the Hofer family to move to L.A. from his native Kansas. “My upbringing was kind of unusual,” says Hofer, who began home-schooling in the second grade following his father’s retirement. “He liked to travel, so we’d just pick up and go. We’d do things like go ski in Colorado for three months. My mom was an adoption attorney and she could handle most of her stuff over phone and email.” When his sister’s talent as a singer and songwriter announced itself, “We were like, ‘Hey, should we go pursue this out in L.A.?’ Moving here from Kansas was a big shift,” he allows. “But I feel like this is home now. All my best friends are here, my parents live out here. I’ve got a whole life here now.”
When the family first set up shop in California, Hofer was still more interested in sports than scripts, and when he did start dabbling in acting, “It was more of a social thing; it was a good way to meet other kids my age. But I was fortunate to get some good traction, and when I was 15, I got a recurring role on KICKIN’ IT,” a Disney XD sitcom. “That was a really great experience,” he enthuses. “And I still had my social outlets and played sports, so I felt very well-rounded. My first manager, who was just wonderful, she told me, ‘Make sure you have other stuff going on. Make sure you have a life. This can’t be everything.’ And she was totally right.”
Hofer didn’t focus on acting full-time until two years into college at Loyola Marymount, where he was a history major. “I kept leaving town for [acting gigs], and eventually, I just couldn’t make both work.” By then, his sister had pivoted away from performing into a career in upcycled fashion, while he’d fallen in love with the profession. “Once I was 18 or 19, I started realizing how much I enjoyed playing different people and getting to experience different kinds of situations,” when he shot his first dramatic role in 2019’s Run The Race, which he starred in opposite DAYS’s Tanner Stine (Joey).
But for Hofer, who describes himself as someone who “thrives on stability and routine,” choosing a career that typically doesn’t offer much of either has not been without its drawbacks. “I think I’m able to handle the highs and lows of being an actor because I’m a pretty stable and nonvolatile person in real life, so I can deal with a volatile career,” he muses. “But I describe it to my friends like, ‘Imagine if you went on hundreds of job interviews every year and you never heard anything. And then you do get a job and do it for a few months, and then you have to get another one!’ That’s what it’s like a lot of the time.”
Particularly when the pandemic hit, and he wrapped his final season of the series he’d been working on, DWIGHT IN SHINING ARMOR for BYUtv, Hofer found himself craving a regular job. “I do not like downtime,” he shudders. “When I got home from shooting the show and realized a lot of stuff still wasn’t filming and auditions were slow to pick back up, I was just sitting there going, ‘Wow. I gotta have something to do!’ ” He found a temporary outlet (“I built a gym around my Bowflex and working out was my productive time every day”), but the true answer to his prayers came in the form of his GH gig. “Being on GENERAL HOSPITAL has been such a blessing,” he says. “The new level of stability being on the show has brought me has been so incredible.”
He’d first auditioned for the show a few months prior to landing Dex, “but I believe everything works out the way it’s supposed to and that everyone ends up where they’re supposed to,” he notes. “And I’m so grateful that the job I got ended up aligning with Maurice [Benard, Sonny], because from the first day, he just really took me under his wing and empowered me to be myself within this format. I told Maurice that I think as an actor, I’m good, but I want to be great. So he holds me to a very high standard and he watches my scenes and gives me notes. He’s been so good to me.”
Dex, of course, hasn’t quite returned the favor — he’s been cozying up to Sonny while secretly plotting with Michael to take Sonny down, and all the while, he’s growing closer to the forbidden fruit of Josslyn, Michael’s little sister/Sonny’s former stepdaughter, played by Eden McCoy. “I did a short film years and years ago where I was [paired] with Lexi Ainsworth [Kristina], but other than that, I’ve never really had a proper love interest,” Hofer reports. “So this is all new territory for me.”
One he is embracing in full. “When you’re new, you’re not only trying to figure everything out, you’re also trying to please everybody,” he notes. “You’re like, ‘I just want to go give you what you want but I’m not really sure how to do this!’ But as time has gone on, I think I’ve really settled in to the character and gotten to put my own spin on things. It has been so much fun getting to spend an extended period of time on my character and I’m excited to see where he goes.”
Did You Know?
• He has black belts in Hapkido, a Korean martial art, and Kobayashi Shorin-ryu, which is Japanese.
• He is buddies with Carson Boatman (Johnny, DAYS). “I called him before I started at GENERAL HOSPITAL, like, ‘Is there anything I need to know before I go in?’ He was telling me, ‘Everything moves fast, it’s a lot of words, so make sure you memorize everything and have all your stuff down.’ ”
Just The Facts
Birthday: May 8
Hometown: Leavenworth, KS
Rock On: “I love Green Day. I also love classic rock, like Boston and Queen and Tom Petty.”
Hoop Dreams: An avid basketball player, Hofer plays in a local league. “We have games every week. It’s so much fun.”
Tuned In: “I’ve been watching a lot of spy stuff lately, like James Bond movies and the Mission: Impossible [franchise] and JACK RYAN on Amazon. I’ve been calling it research since I play a double agent on GH, but it might just be a justification to watch too much film and TV!”
Hunger Games: The thing that most surprised him his first day at GH was the lack of craft services. “I was like, ‘Hey, there’s no snackies here, guys, what’s up?’ But it’s probably for the best, because I never went for the healthy snacks on set!”
Inside Info: Hofer doesn’t have a permanent GH dressing room yet, “but from bouncing around, I can tell you, Cynthia Watros [Nina] has the nicest room. It’s always pristine and calming. She’s also one of the sweetest people on the planet.”
Kitchen Confidential: “I’m quite the cook, if I do say so myself. When I was a boy, I was going to be the President, a chef and an astronaut all at once, and the cooking part stayed!”
Me Vs. Him: “I think Dex has a much edgier side than I have in real life, but I think Dex has really good manners like me. We don’t know where Dex is from yet, but I wouldn’t be surprised if he’s a Midwestern boy.”
