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 the actor's new movie, A Family Affair, dropped on Netflix, it wasn't just the film itself garnering attention online. Starring alongside Nicole Kidman and Joey King, many viewers took the rom-com as a chance to was into the damagingly negative discourse around Zac's looks. 'Zac Efron's face is so hard to look at. The fact he's 36 is beyond the beyond,' wrote one, as another criticised, 'His face looks too smushed and his lips look horrible.' Another added, 'His plastic surgeon should get life with no probation. How dare they distort the face of this specimen.'
This wasn't the first time Zac's face has been savagely dissected online.
When promoting his critically acclaimed film The Iron Claw last year - 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.’
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 the former Disney star's appearance. Ruthlessly trolled online, his physical appearance was the subject of many memes and ongoing mockery.
But while Zac's face is cruelly criticised online, he has previously opened up about the heartbreaking reason for his changing looks.
Zac Efron's accident
In October 2022, the actor opened up about 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's a misconception that we are owed an answer - but for such an intimate topic, we're not. When society comments on a celebrity's physical appearance, it's not just the famous face that falls foul to the damaging narratives about beauty standards displayed online.
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
While some questioned Zac's face changes, in recent years his body has undergone somewhat of a transformation too. While he looked almost unrecognisable in The Iron Claw, a lot of his look could be put down to some very convincing role prep.
Zac portrays 1980s wrestler Kevin Von Erich in the film, 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.’