Zac Efron once made Michael Jackson cry on the phone

'I didn't know what to say and I was just at a loss for words and rambling on'

Zac Efron told the story of the surreal phone call he once shared with Michael Jackson, which ended with both stars in tears.

Appearing on the New Year’s Eve edition of The Graham Norton Show, The Greatest Showman star, now 30, recounted how he unexpectedly ended up on the phone with the pop icon when in Paris, promoting one of the High School Musical films when he was 20 or 21 years old.

While having dinner with director-choreographer Kenny Ortega, the actor was suddenly handed over a phone with Michael Jackson on the other end. A bewildered Efron barely knew how to react. “I was like, ‘This is Zac Efron. I’m a massive fan. I’m an actor. You’re like my hero?’”, he explained. “I didn’t know what to say and I was just at a loss for words and rambling on. And he said, That’s really nice. Can you hand the phone back to Kenny?”

A neat anecdote of an awkward encounter, though the story doesn’t end here. The phone rang suddenly again, handed back to Efron, with Jackson on the other end asking, “Oh, this is Zac from High School Musical? I love what you do. I’m a huge fan.”

“I lost it,” Efron says of his reaction. “I lost my balance. I think I fell over into the wall. I was like, Do you know who I am? What? And I just start crying. I was a mess.” The actor once again told him that he was his hero and thanked him for showing him how to dance and how to shine.

He added, “That made him cry. And so we were both crying to each other on the phone and he ended the whole phone conversation with something along the lines of, ‘Hey Zac.’ And I stopped crying for a second. ‘Isn’t it awesome?’ I was like, What? And he goes, ‘Dreams really do come true, don’t they?’”

Follow Independent Culture on Facebook for all the latest on Film, TV, Music, and more.