Zac Efron finally set the record straight for his facial transformation, a year after sparking plastic surgery rumors.
The actor told Men’s Health in its October 2022 cover story, published Wednesday, that he shattered his jaw while running around his house wearing socks.
Efron, 34, said he slipped, hit the corner of a fountain, passed out and woke up with his “chinbone…hanging from” his face.
During the “High School Musical” star’s recovery, his facial muscles grew “very, very big” to make up for the injury, so he teamed up with a physical therapist to curb their growth.
When Efron took a break in Australia, the masseter [muscles] just grown,” the former Disney Channel star, who broke his jaw earlier in 2013, explained with a shrug.
Fans first noticed Efron’s transformed face in April 2021, leading to rumors that he had gone under the knife.
The following month, his friend Kyle Sandilands denied that Efron had hired work.
“It’s like getting a Picasso and getting a kid with finger paint over it,” Sandilands joked on the May 2021 radio show “The Kyle and Jackie O.” “Why bother?…I would know if he’d had plastic surgery.”
Efron’s mother, Starla Baskett, was the one who alerted her son to the plastic surgery speculation as he chooses not to be on social media.
The “17 Again” star seemed unimpressed, telling Men’s Health, “If I cared so much about what other people thought of me that they might think I do, I absolutely couldn’t do this job.”
Efron described more injuries elsewhere in the interview, from a dislocated shoulder and torn ACL to a broken wrist and a blown back, although they occurred while he was exercising.
While the ‘Hairspray’ star now has a mindful exercise routine that includes yoga, stretching and self-massage, he worked rigorously during the filming of ‘Baywatch’.
The experience led to “dark depression” and “insomnia,” Efron told the magazine, explaining that the 2017 film “burned.” [him] from.”
The “Down to Earth with Zac Efron” star, who didn’t feel better until six months after filming, recalled: “I had a really hard time going back. In the end, they attributed it to taking it way too long. way too many diuretics, and it messed something up.”
Efron noted that he also suffers from agoraphobia.
“I just don’t go out,” he said, calling “people in large groups” a “trigger” for his anxiety disorder, which is characterized by extreme fear of entering crowded spaces.