Zac Efron was born in 1987 and started acting at age 11. His first role on screen was in an episode of ER in 1994, but his initial rise to stardom comes from the Disney Channel original movie franchise High School Musical. Since then, many have wondered how Zac Efron has become a leading man in many of today’s films, going from polished young Disney actor to a leading man in often dark, complicated projects.

Early Beginnings, Immediate Stardom

     Disney-ABC Domestic Television

High School Musical was the most successful Disney Channel film franchise, with the third film installment appearing in theaters. The movie follows a group of high schoolers as they struggle to find their identity and fit in. This movie about teenagers and high school experiences is obviously a musical, and has songs that many pre-teens fell in love with. The films were a big hit, and the cast was thrown into stardom, but none more than Zac Efron.

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The Trouble with Leaving Disney

     Disney

Not everyone has success leaving Disney behind. The significant problem is that people see you play a character, and that’s what they think of every time they see you act. Unfortunately, this doesn’t bode well for a Disney actor who might want to be in horror or a rated-R film.

As a result, many actors stopped acting after Disney. Some still booked movies, but hardly any succeeded as much as Zac Efron. Another great example of leaving the Disney life behind is Miley Cyrus, who went from Hannah Montana to riding a wrecking ball naked. This shocked the fanbase, but they eventually settled down and accepted her rewritten identity away from the Disney girl.

What Zac Efron Did Right

     Warner Bros.

Efron did a few movies after High School Musical before appearing in another musical, an acclaimed remake of Hairspray, and a few comedies, such as 17 Again.

These comedies portrayed Efron as attractive, like High School Musical did, but without the G-rated, made-for-TV movie sensibility. And as all the pre-teens who loved Efron in High School Musical grew older, they became teenaders and young adults alongside him, as his movies and performances were sticking with their age ranges. So in comedies such as Neighbors, we see Zac now playing college roles, again aging with his main fanbase.

Following many comedies, he then did more serious movies films such as Charlie St. Cloud, which showed more of his acting ability. While it was established that Zac was attractive and could sing, it was important that he also did films with more severity and dramatic acting to prove his ability outside the comedy and tween spectrums. He succeeded and established himself as another exciting young actor working in the movie industry.

He stuck with this method; comedies, romances, dramas, he did it all. And all those movies slowly drew him away from Disney and cemented him as an actor outside the Disney franchise, though perhaps none more than Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil and Vile. Efron portrayed Ted Bundy in an instance of ingenious casting; the notorious real-life serial killer was always considered to be very charismatic and attractive, and Efron embraced the typecasting of his earlier ‘handsome boy’ roles in order to completely subvert them with this disturbing portrayal of a psychopath. This would help lead Efron into having the best year of his acting career.

Zac Efron in 2022

     Apple TV

Efron has had an amazing year in cinemas, with 2022 truly reflecting the range of his talents. He recently starred as a dad in Firestarter, making his old fans realize that Efron was old enough to play a dad of a 10-year-old child. Once again, his fanbase is also of this age range and can accept him as capable of playing this part because they’ve seen him grow up before their eyes. Additionally, he played a drifter in the intense thriller Gold, giving perhaps his best performance to date. Finally, he starred in the historically fascinating and surprisingly funny Vietnam War movie, Apple TV’s The Greatest Beer Run Ever.

So How Did Efron Become the Leading Man?

     Universal Pictures

He became the leading man with a lot of hard work and good insight into projects; extremely prolific, he’s been in more than 65 different projects over the past two decades. Efron has done a lot of movies since his High School Musical days, and while people still love his portrayal of Troy Bolton, he now has roles that people arguably love him more for. There are films he’s been in that have instantly become people’s favorite movies, such as The Greatest Showman, that became a staple for the theater-loving community (the very same community who grew up loving High School Musical). He successfully placed himself away from the Disney persona and worked to be taken seriously by the acting industry.

Efron also never diminished his Disney work. He never said it was a bad experience or a regret, and he never spoke of other jobs that were better than High School Musical. Some Disney stars rebelled from their roles by trying to trash them or create negativity around them, but they didn’t realize that those characters meant a lot to the fan base, and such negative criticism would not make the fanbase stick with them. And once you lose that fanbase, you start from scratch with a group of people who are already against you.

Efron used his base exceptionally well, keeping up with age-appropriate movies for his fans and cementing himself as one of their favorite actors. As a result, this former Disney boy is now a leading man in the acting industry and has a solid and committed fanbase to thank for his success.