Oh, to be young, hot and just so Zac these days.
Zac Efron, the 19-year-old heartthrob, even has the perfectly perfect story of those years before he was discovered by Hollywood.
“I grew up in California and was completely ignorant of the entertainment industry,” says the soft-spoken Efron, who sips some designer water in his suite at the Four Seasons Hotel in Los Angeles. “I grew up as a regular guy with a regular life. I went to school and got good grades. I have the most normal family in the world and was always involved in sports.”
Wait, there was nothing angst-ridden that drove him to a life in front of the camera?
“Well,” Efron says. “I was short for my age. A really small kid. I couldn’t really play baseball well.
“But my parents knew I could sing,” says Efron who is a guy singing and dancing his way to stardom these days with a role in the hit “Hairspray,” a lead in “High School Musical 2,” debuting this weekend on the Disney Channel, and the starring role in the possible remake of “Footloose.”
Forget Simon and Paula’s vote. Zac Efron is the new American Idol.
Just look at “High School Musical,” a phenomenon that spawned a megahit DVD, the biggest-selling CD of last year, the most popular TV movie of all time and even a stage tour.
Efron just has to step outside the Four Seasons Hotel and the mania begins. It’s rather deafening.
“Zac! Zac!” screams a teenage girl dressed in her finest Juicy track suit. “I love you! My mom loves you! My baby sister loves you, too! We’ve seen your movie on the Disney Channel, like, 20 times.”
This is a new event for Efron, an unassuming guy in jeans and a black T-shirt. His large, naturally twinkling blue eyes seem tailor made for the Tiger Beat set. Just don’t think he’s a big movie star.
“As long as I stay boring, I think I’ll be fine,” says Efron who mentions he’s most happy these days about the fact that he can pay the rent in the not-so-glam apartment he calls home.
Zachary David Alexander Efron grew up in the small town of Arroyo Grande, about three hours away from Los Angeles, where his father, David, and mother, Starla, both worked at a power plant. He says it was a very normal childhood of doing your homework before watching TV.
He was also the kind of kid who would hear a song on the radio and in two seconds not only memorize the words, but also sing it to his parents and make it sound better than the original. That was done for fun at first and not as a career move.
“I just had this ear for music and I went around singing all the time,” he says.
“We were a regular family and I was always involved in sports,” he says. “Like I said, I was short for my age, so sports weren’t going to become a career. But my parents knew I could really sing. And they saw I was serious about it.”
So Zac took piano lessons with Jeremy Mann, a man who also worked for the production company of “Gypsy.” An audition later he was one of the newsboys on stage at the Pacific Conservatory of the Performing Arts.
“When I was about 14, my drama teacher asked if I wanted to meet with her agency,” Efron recalls. “It was simple. I said, ‘Yeah sure.’ And suddenly, me and my mom took a three-hour drive to Los Angeles, where I auditioned for an agency.
“Since then my life has been crazy,” he says.
Trying to get work as a Brad Pitt with pipes and moves wasn’t easy. After a year of auditions and rejections around Hollywood, Efron’s mother told him that he had one more year of her chauffeuring and then this show-biz dream was done. Of course, he got a bit on “ER” where his cuteness expired on an operating table (gang gunfire) and then did bits on “CSI: Miami” and “Summerland.”
“During this time, we’d drive up to L.A. once a month. It was really an excuse to miss school,” Efron admits. “But then I got extremely lucky and booked small spots on TV.
“Then came the mom ultimatum because she was sick of the drive. Mom said, ‘By the end of this year, you have to get something substantial or otherwise forget it.’ At the time, I had amazing grades, top 10 in my class, and I was driven to make this happen, too.”
Along came the audition for this little Disney project called “High School Musical.”
Efron says that he went through several rounds of auditions. “They would send you to these rooms to learn the songs and the dances. Then you would rehearse,” he says. “You would audition and then all you would hear was, ‘OK, we’ll call you.’ ”
“It was very nerve-wracking,” he admits. “I mean, you never know what’s going on in a director’s head.”
He says the worst part of the tryout process was a marathon audition. “We went for 7½ hours of singing and dancing auditions one night. When you weren’t auditioning, you went outside the building and danced in the streets just to keep your energy up.”
It was worth it because Efron was cast and his real career was born. What to do with him next was a bit tricky. “Hairspray” director Adam Shankman almost didn’t cast him as Link, the bright-eyed love interest of Tracy in “Hairspray.” “I remember Zac came in and he was all smiles. He kept doing this twinkling eye, winking thing. I thought, ‘This isn’t right, but I really like him.’ ”
Shankman says that once he had Efron “turn it down a bit” that he knew he had his Link. “It was just a matter of saying to him that you don’t have to be the teen idol because you already are a teen idol. Now just be the character.”
Shankman is creating a comedy film for Efron called “Seventeen” about a guy who goes back to high school. There is also talk of Efron remaking “Footloose” with “High School Musical” director Kenny Ortega.
“I’m just so grateful Adam came back to me with an open mind,” Efron says. “Thank you, Adam. That really takes it to a new level for me.”
As for his life, Efron is photographed all over town with his maybe girlfriend whose name can’t be mentioned. He even wears a silver ring some say is a commitment band. “It’s from a friend and commitment is just a weird thing for me to think about right now.”
As for Hudgens — whom he dubs “a sweet girl” — she stammers when asked about their relationship. A few days ago she was asked on TV if they were dating and said, “Yeah … uh … I don’t love talking about my personal life.”
Efron is too busy to talk about love. He simply has to adjust to his new life, which has highs and lows. Yes, he knows about the I Hate Zac Efron Club at his cousin’s school. But there are more supporters than haters.
“The entire cast of ‘High School Musical’ visited a bunch of kids in the projects of Compton,” Efron says. “These kids don’t have much, but they would still recite every single scene from our movie.
“These kids knew the lines better than we knew them,” he marvels. “Now that’s something.”
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