Norman began performing as a stand-up comedian in strip joints and nightclubs while producing his first Off-Broadway play, the New York premiere of John Arden’s Live Like Pigs, which opened on June 7, 1965. In 1966 he left for Europe to work the U.S. Army Base Circuit operating out of Frankfurt, Germany, playing army clubs throughout Western Europe. On June 7, 1967, Norman opened at the Playboy Club in London, England, where Variety wrote he was “hysterical… one of the funniest guys ever to cross these shores”. Soon he was headlining in every Playboy Club on their 18-venue circuit, as well as appearing in hotels and nightclubs such as The Flamingo in Las Vegas and New York’s Copacabana with The Temptations. Norman made his debut on The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson on April 28, 1969. As a stage actor, he starred in more than 20 plays. His performance in the title role of Bertolt Brecht’s The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui at the Stamford Center for the Arts in Stamford, Connecticut (1980) was critically acclaimed.

In May 1969, Norman traveled to the Cannes International Film Festival in France to put deals together for movie projects. As Howard Zuker, he had developed a film fund financed by a group of Boston real estate investors based on tax ramifications related to the real estate business, i.e. amortization and depreciation, which could be translated into tax incentives for motion picture investment. Norman applied these to his fund, formed Gemini Pictures International, with himself as President. The company’s first release was the Italian-made Which Way Do You Dig? (also known as Dark of the Day; And The Bombs Keep Falling and I Cannoni Tuonano Ancora), in which he also co-starred alongside Spaghetti Western actor Robert Woods. Over the course of his career, Norman would go on to act in, produce, and finance scores of movies, raising in excess of $100,000,000 for motion picture production, most notably with French producer Henry Lange, with whom he made over a dozen films— including the 1971 vampire lesbian cult hit, Daughters of Darkness – and with Hollywood legend Bert Schneider: Hearts And Minds (Warner Bros., 1974), The Gentleman Tramp (1976) and Paramount’s 1977 Tracks, which in addition was produced by, co-starred Norman and was directed by Henry Jaglom, who would become Norman’s most frequent moviemaking partner. As producer, presenter, financier and actor, Norman has collaborated with Jaglom for the last 40 years on such films as Sitting Ducks (1980),Venice, Venice (1992),Babyfever (1994),Hollywood Dreams (2005), Irene in Time (2009),Queen of the Lot (2010) and Festival in Cannes (2001), for which Norman received favorable reviews.

In 1998, Norman acquired the catalog of the American Play Company (founded 1889) for himself and actor-producer Michael Douglas for their newly formed joint venture, The American Entertainment Holding Company (AEHC), which controlled the rights to thousands of plays and manuscripts by such authors as John Steinbeck, Tennessee Williams, George Bernard Shaw, Eugene O’Neill, Thornton Wilder, Oscar Wilde, A.A. Milne and Maurine Dallas Watkins. In 2008, Norman initiated a lawsuit against Douglas; the two settled out of court, dissolving the partnership.

In 2006, Variety’s Elizabeth Guider wrote of Norman: “There are people through the decades who become regular fixtures in the pages of Variety – everyone from Al Jolson to Jimmy Durante to Michael Ovitz to Harvey Weinstein. But no one’s presence has been as constant as that of Zack Norman.” The reason for this, she wrote, is that in the 1980s he regularly bought ads promoting himself on page 6 of the newspaper.

Norman is also a painter as well as an art collector, counting among his acquisitions five pieces by Jean-Michel Basquiat, whose “Untitled” sold in May, 2017 at Sotheby’s New York for $110.5 million, setting the record price for an American artist at auction. In 1982, Norman purchased “Hannibal” from Basquiat in the artist’s studio for $3200. That piece sold on October 9, 2016 at Sotheby’s London for £10.6 million. Norman himself started painting in 1976.