[4] When he was 14 years old, he moved to the Chicago area and enrolled at New Trier High School in Winnetka, Illinois, where he entered the theater department.

In 2004, he starred as Deputy Dale in the independently produced Lightning Bug, which was written and directed by Robert Hall, who was an original bandmate in Hal's hard rock band Zero 1.

Sparks had his screen debut on the television movie Frog, starring Shelley Duvall, Elliott Gould, and Scott Grimes in 1987.

Sparks had made appearances on various television programs from as early as 1994, when he played a long-haired skateboarder on the fourteenth episode of the first season of Lois & Clark: The New Adventures of Superman.

[11] In 2007, Sparks became the voice of the lead character in the animated series for children, Tak & the Power of Juju for Nickelodeon (replacing Jason Marsden), which ran for twelve episodes between 2007 and 2008.

He performed with such musical legends as Smokey Robinson, Gladys Knight, Wynonna Judd, Dennis DeYoung, Dee Snider and Sebastian Bach.

[16] Sparks was a contestant on the 2008 VH1 celeb-reality series Celebracadabra, where the celebrities vie to out-perform each other with magic they have learned from their experienced coaches.

Other celebrity contestants competing included Ant, Lisa Ann Walter, Carnie Wilson, Christopher "Kid" Reid, Kimberly Wyatt, and C. Thomas Howell.

In 2009, Sparks recorded his first Showtime comedy special Charmageddon in front of a standing-room-only crowd at the OC Pavilion in Santa Ana, California.

In 2019, Sparks appeared in the premiere episode of Famously Afraid on the Travel Channel, a series in which celebrities tell of their personal unusual encounters, to describe his experience with alien abduction.

Also expected to debut is the band's first video for the single "American Psycho," which was directed by Adrienne Wanyo and filmed on location at the Houdini Mansion.

He often joins the Los Angeles cover band Steel Panther to sing classic 1980s metal tunes, such as the Skid Row hit "Youth Gone Wild".

"[25] Sparks is an activist who regularly participates in charitable events for organizations like AIDS Walk, Farm Sanctuary, the Lilli Claire Foundation, Imagine a Cure and the Marijuana Policy Project.

[29] Sparks has studied martial arts since the age of 8 years old and holds belts in Karate, Tae Kwon Do, and several forms of Kung Fu including Wushu.

After a Twitter campaign to encourage the "real Zoltan" to appear at a game, Sparks flew to Pittsburgh on July 25, 2012, to throw out the honorary first pitch, and was on hand to see the Pirates win 3–2 over his hometown team, the Chicago Cubs.

[35] He also does a political commentary talk show on the Chicago radio station WCPT 820 AM on Saturdays, which is uploaded on his YouTube channel.