By Ava Branch
Photos by Raul Romo
Stylist: Mark Holmes
“You know, they always say, like, if you want to make God laugh, tell him your plans,” Evan Holtzman says with a grin. “Because it just always ends up going a different way.”
I guess by that logic, Holtzman must keep God in absolute stitches. The Texas-born actor never dreamed about red carpets or movie sets growing up. He studied mechanical engineering at the University of Texas at Austin then proceeded to work in Houston’s oil and gas industry for the first two years during his post-grad experience. He landed a stable engineering job in Los Angeles. Acting, for Holtzman, was never on his radar—until, suddenly, it was.
“My roommate, he runs out of his door. He busts through his door and he’s like, ‘Oh, Evan, I got this…I got this audition for NCIS in 30 minutes. Can you help me?’” Holtzman recalls. “I’m like, ‘Oh yeah, sure.’”
That roommate happened to be Glen Powell.
“It was kind of my first — I like to say it was my first peek behind Oz’s curtain,” Holtzman notes.
From there, curiosity turned into a growing fascination. He began sneaking out of his engineering job to attend auditions, taking (as he called it) “very long bathroom breaks,” with an extra change of clothes stashed in his car. “You know, I did the engineering job from 9 to 5 during the day,” he recalled. For Holtzman, this period of time was his “Batman, Bruce Wayne” moment.
Holtzman started taking acting classes “just for fun,” but it wasn’t long before the bug bit hard. “My first acting class was when I was roommates with Glen 13 years ago,” he says. “And so to kind of make a lot of mistakes along the way has been very valuable.”
Holtzman found himself at the center of Warfare, a harrowing and immersive new war film from director Alex Garland and former Navy SEAL Ray Mendoza. The movie unfolds in real time, tracking a SEAL platoon during a mission through insurgent territory in Iraq in 2006. Holtzman stars as Brock, a sniper, opposite a star-studded ensemble that includes Will Poulter, Joseph Quinn, Kit Connor, Charles Melton, and D’Pharaoh Woon-A-Tai.
Holtzman and Mendoza have known each other for nearly a decade, and that connection helped Holtzman earn a spot in the film — but not without work. The cast underwent an intensive three-week boot camp to prepare for the shoot. “To be clear, we get to be able to do it in a very safe space… I mean, we went through a three-week boot camp,” he says.
“Ray and Alex made it very clear this was, like, not going to be an easy shoot,” Holtzman adds. “They were looking, you know, from the go, just for people with really the right attitude and grit to be able to, you know, jump on board for something like this.”
Warfare isn’t just another combat movie. The film’s true goal was to create something wholly original. “We’re kind of making, like, a new, a new type of war film,” he explains. “And that’s a bold statement to say… you never really know where that’s going to go.”
At the core of the project, what grounds the film is its emotional truth — a sense of lived experience that goes beyond performance, a connection that makes the set around him almost transform. “We had the real guys on set with us, too,” Holtzman says. “Seeing your new best friends and your brothers covered in blood… Yeah. It can…it feels very real. It’s scary, but, you know, we all knew the assignment. I think we all showed up.”
For Holtzman, the emotional investment ran deep. “This film is, like, on an island of its own. We were so emotionally involved in it,” he says. It’s “my favorite project that I’ve ever been a part of.”
He especially cherished his time with Elliot, one of the real Navy SEALs who inspired the film. “I loved just being on set to be there with my boys and to be there with Elliot and to watch through Elliot’s eyes in a way.”
That lens — of empathy, of shared purpose — was at the heart of their performances. In every performance, he’s always thinking, always pondering: “How did my character make you feel in our scenes?” Holtzman says. “What’s the emotional truth of what you experienced? And so that was always our north star with everything.”
Beyond Warfare, Holtzman recently starred in Richard Linklater’s Hit Man on Netflix, opposite Glen Powell and Adria Arjona. His resume includes acclaimed projects like Hidden Figures, Messiah, and HBO’s Westworld. But even as his acting profile continues to rise, Holtzman is keeping his eye on the long game. “I’m writing a few projects of my own,” he shares. “It’s kind of nice, really, just being able to, like, focus on, on, like, the stillness of life.”
He’s also interested in stepping behind the camera one day. “I would like to direct,” he says. “I’ve always really looked up to guys like Bradley Cooper — kind of their path through this entertainment world.” But he’s not chasing some sort of headline or brand empire. “Maybe in ten years from now, I’ll be owning a coffee shop and writing something,” he muses. “I never see myself as a guy selling a tequila brand or anything. Nothing against that. But I do love a good tequila. But I love a good coffee.”
Holtzman might be stepping into bigger roles and more high-profile projects, but ego never seems to enter the equation. At the very beginning of the conversation, after being told how much research had gone into preparing for the interview — and how impressive his career trajectory really is — he offered a soft laugh and remarked, “hopefully there’s some interesting things about me. I’m curious what you found…but how are you?”
It was a throwaway moment on the surface, but one that revealed something deeper: a guy still genuinely surprised by the attention, still more interested in turning the spotlight on others than on himself. In an industry that often rewards the loudest voices in the room, Holtzman stands apart by keeping his feet firmly on the ground.
It’s important for him to remain “grounded, remembering who I am,” echoing a theme that came up again and again throughout the interview. For him, it’s not about chasing fame or acclaim — it’s about craft, community, and the relationships that matter most. “The only thing that really matters is my relationship with my wife and our cute dog…I hope she’s still around” he laughed.
In a way, Holtzman’s journey is a reflection of the kind of character he’s often drawn to — emotionally honest, quietly resilient, and unshakably sincere. Whether he’s immersed in the sneaking out of an office job to chase after an audition, or chaos of a war zone, he’s always been true to one thing: the version of himself that’s still just figuring it out, humbly, one scene at a time.
Evan Holtzman is carving out his own path — one thoughtful, careful step at a time.
