Zac Efron

Zac Efron, the High School Musical alum, talks about how the dangers of the extreme training he did for Baywatch. Now he's reinventing himself in a healthy ...

“I told him he was funny,” he says ruefully, “but now I’m like, Ah, that’s not it!” Efron is funny, but the valet is convinced he’s committed a faux pas. “He could be like the Twilight guy,” he says. He appreciates the “self-aware bro” description and discusses that kind of character (“somebody that’s learning, that’s listening, that has an open heart and mind”) with tenderness. “He’s a little more edgy,” he says of the actor. Though Efron was underwhelmed by the roles he was being considered for at the time, he was instantly taken with The Greatest Beer Run Ever, written and directed by Oscar winner Peter Farrelly of Green Book, a film that the Internet panned but Efron—and, controversially, the Academy—loved. “I started to develop insomnia,” he says, “and I fell into a pretty bad depression, for a long time. For the first time in his working life, Efron had a window to take a real break. While he’s jovial and off the cuff during the rest of our conversation, as he talks about the film, his voice gets quieter, his wording more precise. Initially he was excited about Baywatch—he thought it could be a fun action franchise, and he liked his character—but the recovery walloped him. He has played several very approachable characters, the type of guys a friend of mine calls “self-aware bros.” He also played Ted Bundy in Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil and Vile, but that doesn’t put anyone off. As we peruse the menu at the steakhouse, he reveals that this is his first meal out in a long time. The sharp lines of his arms were apparent even through a dust tornado and even from a safe distance away.