‘This kid’s gonna grow up to be Brad Pitt’: How Zac Efron escaped High School Musical and became a great actor

With the former teen star delivering a performance of nuance and emotional gusto as tragedy-struck wrestler Kevin Von Erich in ‘The Iron Claw’, Geoffrey Macnab looks at the arc of a talented actor who’s finally shed his bubblegum persona and come of age

The many faces of Zac Efron (Alamy/Getty)

It’s a poignant moment in a movie full of them: Kevin Von Erich, a man with more muscles than The Incredible Hulk’s Lou Ferrigno, brushes away a tear. “You shouldn’t see me like this. A man doesn’t cry,” he mutters to his two young kids. The scene comes at the end of The Iron Claw (out this week), and most viewers will feel a big lump in their throat at this point. The character we’ve been watching over the last two hours has suffered so much that we can’t help but root for him. A professional wrestler, he has been battered and bruised inside the ring – and has experienced extreme pain and bereavement outside it too.

The actor playing Kevin with such dignity and pathos is Zac Efron, former Disney teen star. Not so long ago, Efron was being dismissed by critics as a lightweight. “A young fellow of such flawless matinee-idol good looks that he could well have been manufactured in a plastics factory,” was how Time Out’s reviewer summed him up, when Efron played Troy Bolton in the three High School Musical films. Rolling Stone complained that the High School Musical franchise was “not even bubblegum enough to be enjoyable on an ironic level” and “plain vanilla, no sprinkles” – and Troy was at the heart of it all.

Efron was the king of bland, ersatz middle-American teen pop culture. He played basketball. He sang lullabies and danced. His relationship on screen and off with co-star Vanessa Hudgens delighted the teen fans. They were part of a new generation of wholesome young stars such as the Jonas brothers and Miley Cyrus, who also appeared in Disney Channel shows. But within two decades, the squeaky clean teen heart-throb has turned into a broodingly intense Method actor.