If you think back to a teen heartthrob that dominated the 2010s, your mind may turn to Zac Efron. Teenage girls swooned over the actor's every move from the moment he found fame on High School Musical playing basketball-hero-cum-singing-superstar Troy Bolton, aged just 17. Thus, his charisma and charm have become Hollywood legend ever since. While his acting and singing talents are undeniable, Zac’s outward appearance also played a major part in his star power. Teenagers plastered their walls with his face and he was named 'The Sexiest Male Alive' in 2017. One can only imagine the pressure of maintaining this image.
Alas, in recent years, the discussion around his appearance has changed drastically - and it’s setting a dangerous precedent. As his latest film, The Iron Claw, continues to win acclaim, some just can’t refrain from wading into the damagingly negative discourse around Zac’s looks. ‘I just can’t get used to Zac Efron’s new face,’ criticised one X user, prompting replies, ‘It gets worse and worse’ and ‘It is so weird.’ Meanwhile, another wrote a more backhanded take: ‘Who cares what happened to his face, he’s still GORGEOUS.’
But when the actor was doing promo for The Iron Claw - which he stars in alongside The Bear's Jeremy Allen White and Harris Dickinson of Where The Crawdads Sing fame – the commentary was even more damaging. ‘He really looks like Lord Farquaad’ was one cruel comparison, with a second comment reading, ‘Jesus Christ Zac has really messed himself up.’
And this wasn’t the first time Zac’s face was savagely dissected online.
Back in 2021, the High School Musical star appeared in a promotional video for Earth Day, which quickly went viral as many pointed out that his jawline looked different to usual. Over time, 'Zac Efron face transplant' and 'Zac Efron plastic surgery' dominated Google Trends with many speculating over what was the root cause of the changes in Zac's appearance. He was ruthlessly trolled online and his physical appearance was the subject of many memes and ongoing mockery.
Zac Efron's accident
In October 2022, the actor opened up about the plastic surgery rumours in his Men's Health cover story and insisted that there was no truth to them. Zac revealed that the changes to his face were due to a 2013 injury he sustained after slipping over in his home and smacking his chin against the edge of a granite fountain. He passed out and woke up to his 'chin bone hanging off' his face. The severe incident left his jaw completely shattered.
The actor told the outlet that as a result of his injury, his chewing or 'masseter muscles' had to overcompensate. 'The masseters just grew,' he insisted. 'They just got really, really big.' Zac added that he wasn’t made aware of the online furore about his appearance until he received a phone call from his mum, as he deliberately keeps away from social media.
He explained in an interview with Entertainment Tonight, 'My mum told me. I don’t really read the Internet, so I don’t really care.'
The actor expressed that after noticing the 'direction' that the rumours were going in that 'maybe it was time' he spoke up about it. The thing is, he shouldn’t have had to address it at all. With celebrities, there is a misconception that we are owed an answer, but for such an intimate topic we're not. As a society, we have to be extremely careful about how we speak about a celebrity's physical appearance, because it's not just them that falls foul to the damaging narratives about beauty standards displayed online.
Naturally, female celebrities bear the brunt of this nit-picking, people dissect every little line change on women’s faces, but if we won’t stand for people pulling apart women’s looks online - surgically altered or not - we should have the same energy for male celebrities.
We also never know the full extent of anyone's health. Indeed, Zac later revealed that he 'almost died' from the initial fall. Knowing his injuries were the result of physical trauma, the mockery is truly disgusting.
Even though Zac dealt with the cruel rumours like a trooper, this entire incident further reinforced his belief that it’s better to stay away from the internet’s opinions. He explained, 'If I valued what other people thought of me to the extent that they may think I do, I definitely wouldn’t be able to do this work.'
Although Zac Efron doesn’t look at the headlines, it clearly affected him to the level of needing to voice something.
And alas, people still continue to search 'What happened to Zac Efron's face?' Unfortunately, the actor's accident revelation did nothing to quell plastic surgery rumours. Celebrity facial plastic surgeon Dr. Sam Rizk speculated to New York Post of Zac's changed appearance: 'He probably took the opportunity, in addition to correcting it, to do something better. He might have had jaw advancements where they pull the chin a little bit more forward because his chin looks a little bit more prominent. Or a chin implant or mandibular angle implants [in the lower jaw] or all of the above.'
In short: we shouldn’t view anyone’s appearance as an object with which the public can scrutinise or mock – whether they’ve changed it on purpose or not.
Zac Efron’s transformation in The Iron Claw
Zac portrays 1980s wrestler Kevin Von Erich in The Iron Claw, a role which saw him put on pounds of muscle, wear a dishevelled wig and slip into minuscule shorts when in the ring.
The actor told The Hollywood Reporter, ‘In the best way possible, I did not look anything like me. It was jarring at first, but we kind of put it together piece by piece. Individually, the wig by itself looks kind of ridiculous - by themselves, the clothes look pretty crazy. When you put them all together in the sets that our team built and get out there in the ring under those lights, it looks like the Von Erichs, man, and that was our goal. I think it added a lot to it.’