Since his viral video in 2021, fans have had questions over Zac Efron‘s face and if he’s had any plastic surgery done. Well, after a year of rumors over his face, the High School Musical star broke his silence and explained the real reason he looks so different to fans.
Related: Meet Zac Efron‘s ex-girlfriends over the years, including Vanessa Hudgens
Speculation over what happened to the actor’s face and whether he had plastic surgery started in April 2021 when he appeared in Bill Nye’s Earth Day Musical special for Facebook Watch, which led to questions from fans about his chin.
“WHAT THE F—K HAPPENED TO ZAC EFRON LMAO, looks like he got stung by a bee,” Twitter user @KingAmadDiallo wrote at the time. Other users compared Zac’s face to The Weeknd’s prosthetics in his “Save Your Tears” music video. “Zac Efron was way too inspired by The Weeknd‘s face shape,” another user wrote.
Zac’s friend, Australian talk show host Kyle Sandilands, defended him at the time, denying that he had any plastic surgery. “I would know if he’d had any plastic surgery,” Sandilands said in an episode of the The Kyle and Jackie O Show podcast at the time “It’s like getting a Picasso and having a kid finger paint all over it. Why bother?”
So what happened to Zac Efron’s face?
Zac responded to rumors he underwent plastic surgery on his face in an interview with Entertainment Tonight in September 2022. In the interview, Zac called the rumors “funny” and explained that his different-looking face was due to a jaw injury in 2013—not surgery. “My mom told me. I never really read the internet, so, I don’t really care,” he said.
He continued, “It was funny. It sucks. I almost died, but we’re good.” Zac broke his jaw and had to have his mouth wired shut after he was running through his house in socks, slipped, hit his face on the granite corner of a fountain and lost consciousness. When he woke up, his chin bone was hanging off his face, according to Men’s Health. The injury also came around the time he tore his ACL, dislocated his shoulder, broke his wrist and threw out his back.
Zac told the magazine in September 2020 that he does physical therapy to rehabilitate the injury, but he stopped for a time, which caused facial issues. He also explained to the magazine that the muscles in his face work together “like a symphony,” so the masseter muscles in his face, which are used for chewing, had to overcompensate for his other facial muscles not being as strong.
While he was in Australia from 2020 to 2021, Zac took a break from his physical therapy. Around that time, he also recorded a video for Bill Nye’s “Earth Day Musical” special for Facebook Watch, where fans noticed that his chin looked different. “The masseters just grew,” he says.
“They just got really, really big.” Zac told Men’s Health that he wasn’t even aware of the response to the size of his jaw until his mother called to ask if he had undergone plastic surgery. As for the rumors, Zac told Men’s Health, “If I valued what other people thought of me to the extent that they may think I do,” he adds, “I definitely wouldn’t be able to do this work.”
On June 13, 2024, Zac stepped out on the red carpet at the premiere of his new Netflix rom-com, A Family Affair, looking more himself than ever. “Fillers dissolved, chin/jaw implant swelling gone….oh he’s so back,” one person tweeted. “Finally, he looks normal,” a second person chimed in about the former teen heartthrob’s face. “He looks so much better,” a third added.
The actor’s character even acknowledged the cosmetic change in the film. “People thought that my quad [muscles] were completely fake. Like, that I got implants,” Zac’s character Chris tells Brooke in A Family Affair. “People magazine had a four page spread on my quad job. They called me the ‘quad father.’ It’s not that funny, actually, I had to sue them. But, they’re real.… I did have surgery though. Just right there [under my chin]. I fell on set onto some broken glass.”
Some fans were still shocked at the change. “I am trying to watch ‘A Family Affair’ and I’m finding it so hard. What on earth did Zac Efron do to his face? I have tried but I can never get used to looking at it,” one tweeted. Other people were shocked by the combination of his face and Nicole Kidman’s. One person wrote, “Zac Efron’s face work makes him look as old as Nicole Kidman. It’s fascinating.”
As for his body, Zac previously revealed to Men’s Health that he started suffering from insomnia and depression after his physical transformation for 2017’s Baywatch. “I started to develop insomnia, and I fell into a pretty bad depression, for a long time,” he said. “Something about that experience burned me out. I had a really hard time recentering.”
He continued, “Ultimately they chalked it up to taking way too many diuretics for way too long, and it messed something up.” Zac told Men’s Health that it wasn’t until 2022 that he started to feel like his old self again. “That Baywatch look, I don’t know if that’s really attainable,” he said. “There’s just too little water in the skin. Like, it’s fake; it looks CGI’d. And that required Lasix, a powerful diuretic, to achieve. So I don’t need to do that. I much prefer to have an extra, you know, 2 to 3 percent body fat.”
He recalled that it “used to be a dream” to have his body “in shape all the time.” But the changes came with a price. “What if I just say, “F**k it” and let myself go? So I tried it, and I was successful,” he said. “And for all the reasons I thought it would be incredible, I was just miserable. My body would not feel healthy; I just didn’t feel alive. I felt bogged down and slow.”
Zac also spoke about his regret over his Baywatch body in a 2020 episode of Hot Ones. “It’s just stupid. It’s just not real. I’m happy that it worked, I’m happy that it got me through it,” he said. “Take care of your heart, take care of your brain, you’re good.”
