P. J. Ochlan

P. J. Ochlan, born February 16, 1975, and raised on Long Island, New York, is an American actor, voice actor, and dialect coach. His professional career began in 1986 with television commercials and voiceovers, and he went on to work across film, television, stage, and audiobook narration.

Ochlan's screen career began in earnest with a recurring role on the CBS soap opera Guiding Light and the lead role in the ABC pilot Wayside School, directed by Thomas Schlamme. His early television work also included Let's Get Mom for FOX, directed by Garry Marshall and starring Carol Kane; the ABC Afterschool Special Seasonal Differences, featuring Uta Hagen; the ABC pilot The Flockens; The Baby-Sitters Club; and Brotherly Love for HBO. He held recurring roles on the Carsey-Werner primetime series Grand and the NBC soap Another World, and later appeared in the FOX series Space: Above and Beyond as well as the FOX pilots Hitched and Beyond. His guest appearances include episodes of The Practice, The District opposite Craig T. Nelson, Castle, See Dad Run opposite Scott Baio, and The Crazy Ones opposite Robin Williams.

His feature film debut came in Little Vegas, alongside Catherine O'Hara and Jerry Stiller. In 1991, Ochlan appeared in Little Man Tate, Jodie Foster's directorial debut, playing Damon Wells, known as "The Mathemagician." Subsequent film credits include Dead Man on Campus with Mark-Paul Gosselaar, Quigley with Gary Busey, Wilde Salome opposite Al Pacino, Jersey Boys directed by Clint Eastwood, and Cyberon, a direct-to-video Doctor Who spin-off released in 2000.

On stage, Ochlan played Moth in the New York Shakespeare Festival production of Love's Labour's Lost for Joseph Papp at the Public Theater. He made his Broadway debut in 1993 in the Lincoln Center Theater revival of Robert E. Sherwood's Abe Lincoln in Illinois, which starred Sam Waterston, was directed by Gerald Gutierrez, and received three Tony Award nominations. His Los Angeles stage work has included productions with A Noise Within and the Theater at Boston Court.

As an audiobook narrator, Ochlan has recorded hundreds of titles. His narration work has earned him an Audie Award win, multiple Audie Award nominations, several AudioFile Earphones Awards, and a Voice Arts Award nomination. Concurrent with his performance career, Ochlan works as a dialect and performance coach for film, television, stage, and voiceover. In 2012 he founded Dr. Dialect, and in 2013 he co-founded the Deyan Institute for Voice Artistry and Technology, where he teaches voiceover and audiobook narration. He has also served as an instructor and presenter at UCLA, the Audio Publishers Association Conference, That's Voiceover, and the National Audio Theatre Festival.