The Strange Transformation of Zac Efron | Internet Anarchist

0:00What possesses someone to go through a transformation as drastic as Zach Efron? He went from being a teenage heartthrob to getting absolutely shredded with chiseled abs to looking like a team-reversion kendo and eventually ending up as a hulking bodybuilder, all in the span of just 20 years. For most other actors, extreme changes like these are either the results of them taking on roles that demand a new look like Chris Pratt going from Cudley comedic fellow on Parks and Rec to achieving the classic Marvel hero physique, or they're the unfortunate consequences of an aging celebrity trying to look younger with plastic surgeries and a backfiring spectacularly. However, neither of these is true when it comes to Zach Efron. His is the story of an actor trying to escape the curse of typecasting. Trying to become something more than the perfect Disney Prince for millions of teenage girls and trying to be appreciated for more than just his body.

1:18But failing to do so every single time, even if these attempts came with an immense physical and psychological toll. Hi, I'm the internet anarchist. I create weekly YouTube documentaries and today we're taking a closer look at the strange and at times downright bizarre transformations of Zach Efron. What pushed him to make these changes over the years? And as you'll see by the end of this video, how the explanation for his drastic transformation might be a cover story rather than the truth. Zachary David Alexander Efron began his acting career in the early 2000s with minor guest roles and shows like The Guardian,

2:20ER and Firefly. However, despite his decent acting chops and even landing a recurring role on WB Summerland, he never achieved major success. Sure, his career was on the rise, but nothing too significant. That is, until a single movie role changed his life forever and turned him into a household name. In 2006, Zach was cast as Trey Bolton in a Disney Channel television movie called High School Musical, a soft, kindhearted, basketball jock who feels conflicted between his scholarship winning sports career and music. And to say that this movie was a success would be a gross understatement. It became a cultural phenomenon, drawing in hundreds of millions of viewers world-wide, with its soundtrack becoming the best-selling album of 2006. What made this success even crazy was the fact that it wasn't just a fluke. The sequel in 2007 became the most watched TV movie ever. While the third entry was released in theaters and earned over 90 million in its first three days,

3:22breaking the record for the largest opening weekend for a musical film, these three movies turned Zach from a relatively unknown up-and-coming actor to a global movie star with a fanbase in the millions. However, what started as a dream come true quickly turned into an inescapable nightmare, one that Zach's been trying to escape to this day. And the first reason for this nightmare was the type of attention he was getting from everyone around him, especially older women. You see, while his acting and musical ability in high school musical were certainly notable, the thing that shot his popularity through the roof was his looks. Many saw him as not the actor for Troy Bolton, but as Troy Bolton himself, with some interviewers going as far as openly flirting with him on air. Um, quite stunning in real life, I must say.

4:23Ah, thank you. That sounds really odd. Ah, very odd, but the guys back home they said to me, oh you've got to flirt with Zach here for all of them and everything. And I'm like, god, I'm like 10 years older than him. Um, check it out. Oh, I'm actually a bit older than that probably. So do you like older women? Absolutely. Man, you haven't seen 17 again. No matter what he said or did, the conversation always circled back to his appearance. This obsession even followed him into his career as well, where the only roles he could land were the ones that were light heavily on his looks. Now, to an outsider, this sounds like the ideal scenario. He could just keep doing what he was already well known for and make millions in the process. But for Zach, getting typecast as yet another musical heartthrob was far from what he wanted his career to be. The Troy Bolton image had become a cage he was desperate to escape. So much so that he even turned down the foot's loose remake to avoid getting boxed in that type of role. This even became the driving force behind his first major transformation from whole 17-age

5:33pretty boy to rugged muscular men. Though this transition was anything but smooth. It started with him taking on more serious and emotional roles in movies like 17 again and Charlie St. Cloud. He also packed on a ton of muscle for his role as a Navy SEAL in the Lucky One, which was an action romance drama of sorts. Zach was determined to reinvent himself as someone completely unrecognizable from Troy Bolton, an ambition that culminated in his insane transformation for the movie Baywatch in 2017. He put on a reported 10 pounds of lean muscle mass in just 12 weeks, for this role alongside the rock. And 12 fans were certainly shocked to see him alter himself to this extent. It didn't bring the career shift he was looking for. All of these roles were complete disasters that fell to impress both the critics and the audiences. Well, as long as they helped shift a spotlight away from Zach's looks and towards his acting, they would have accomplished their goal. Unfortunately for Zach, he couldn't outrun the role Hollywood had assigned to him.

6:38All his transformation did was redirect the focus from his face to his physique. I have crushes on you and when we were watching the movie, and I don't get like this, either. Like I'm not like, oh my god, I love this person. It's not me. I never had a poster of a guy on my wall. I never like, I had pictures of animals in my wall in high school. I never was like, oh my god, I think he's so hot. You are though. And when you took up your shirt in the movie, to make matters worse, his transformation for Baywatch was incredibly taxing for him, both physically and mentally. Difficult workouts and strict diets are one thing, but Zach had to go above and beyond for this role. He spent much of the movie's filming in a constant state of dehydration to make his muscles look more defined, and even admitted to taking diuretics medication, which helped him lower the amount of fluids in his body even more. He later revealed the side effects of his drastic transformation in an interview with Men's Health, stating,

7:38I started to develop insomnia and I fell into a pretty bad depression for a long time. Something about that experience burned me out. I had a really hard time recentering. It took months of recovery just to regain a semblance of normalcy, but even then, he was never as healthy as he once was, raising the question of whether any of it was worth it at all. The only silver lining here was that his fans, many of whom grew up admiring his looks, were now aware of the struggles happening behind the curtains. With comments like, I'm glad he's now doing what works best for him. The extreme diets and crazy workout routines are never worth it. And poor Zach, I feel like he's gotten so much flak-slash attention for his looks, which obviously makes him uncomfortable both ways. As for Zach himself, Baywatch left him completely burnt out from body transformations. So he decided to focus on his craft instead. January of 2019 saw the release of Zach's newest movie called Extremely Wicked Shockingly Evil

8:40and D'Ville, documenting the life of the infamous serial killer Ted Bundy. This was an accurately creepy depiction of the deranged killer from Zach, and more importantly, it was a completed departure from the more whimsical Troy Bolton adjacent roles he did in the past. For a moment, it seemed like this movie might be Zach's ticket out of the pretty boy box, and a chance fame to finally be taken seriously for his talent. And to his surprise, it finally worked. While the movie itself wasn't received very well for the romanticisation of Ted Bundy's horrific crimes, Zach's performance in it was welcomed by

9:40most viewers. Ted Bundy's charisma is a major part of his story, and Zach was able to convey that to perfection with one critic writing, Extremely Wicked begins to make the audience second guess Bundy's guilt. As Efron's adequate portrayal of Bundy introduces a split second thought, maybe he was a decent guy that happened to be at the wrong place at the wrong time. At this point, it seemed like Zach Efron had finally found what had been chasing for the past decade. The conversation surrounding him was now about his acting, and people were ready to see him in more serious and emotional roles like Bundy. He also did a travel and lifestyle show called Down to Earth with Netflix after this movie. This showed a more natural side of Zach, which helped the audience connect with him further and see him as a person, not just the icon of male beauty standards. As a comment on YouTube perfectly summarised, he has definitely gone a long way since high school musical, but then out of nowhere, Zach managed to under his past decade of progress in an instant,

10:44and bring the focus back to his looks. On April 23rd, 2021, Zach appeared on an Earth Day special alongside Bill Nye, and the way he looked left fans jaws on the floor, but not in a good way. He looked unrecognizable with a wide jawline resembling the exaggerated proportions of the Giga Chad meme. His face also looked unnaturally puffy and bloated than it ever did in the past, and the people on the internet were not kind to this new look. He looks like a bufflord far Zach Efron knew why his face is uncanny. Poor guy got stung by a bee. However, while people on the internet were busy meming him to oblivion, they were also buzzing with speculation about what caused this strange and bizarre transformation, and the answer many of them came up with was the result of a botched plastic surgery. This explained how he was able to change so much in the short time

11:47between this and his last public appearance. It also provided a reason for the puffyness as he wasn't likely fully healed yet. That said, the idea of Zach Efron getting plastic surgery didn't quite add up. After all, he had no real reason to go under the knife. Usually, the celebrities who get facial surgeries do so on the hopes of making themselves look younger, like Simon Cowell or Mickey Rock, but Zach was just 34 years old at the time this happened. More importantly, this is what he looked like just two years earlier, so there had to be a bigger reason behind such a dramatic change in his appearance. Zach finally addressed the rumours in September of 2022, and according to him, his new look had nothing to do with plastic surgery. Instead, it was the result of an injury he sustained back in 2013. As the story goes, he was walking around in just his socks. This led to him slipping over and hitting his head on the edge of a granite fountain, and when he regained consciousness, his lower jaw was hanging off his face.

12:49From there, he was rushed to hospital, and doctors were able to reconstruct his jaw. However, he still had to endure a lot of physical therapy over the years. But before his appearance in January of 2021, he had to take time off from his therapy, which resulted in his masseter muscles growing many times their original size, and giving him the strange white look. This story was whirder than the transformation itself, leaving many to question the authenticity of what he was saying. Even many medical professionals had never seen anything like this happen to a patient at the time of surgery let alone nine years later. According to Zach, he fell at home, heard his chin, and then during recovery, his masseters got enlarged and grew more than they did in the past. Now, is that possible? Maybe, but I've dealt with treating a lot of facial trauma in the past, and I never saw that type of impact. So the real reason for Zach's facial transformation remained somewhat of a

13:52mystery. That is, until the set photos of his next movie leaked on the internet and gave a clue on what might have happened. In 2023, Zach Efron starred in the Iron Claw, a movie about the life of the Von Erich wrestling brothers. Before this movie came out, set photos of Zach Efron surfaced on social media, showing him more jacked than it ever been in his life. It even made his impressive Baywatch physique look mid by comparison, and while it sparked yet another debate over whether his transformation was natural, it also introduced a second possible explanation for what might have happened to his face. Since many didn't buy the injury story, they still believed that this was the result of plastic surgery. Odds are that he may have had a custom 3D printed jaw implant along with cheek implants. For me, I'm seeing too much change to just attribute it to a specific chin trauma, and I'm seeing bony changes that I think go beyond the effects of what a fat transfer

14:55can do. Which he likely got to distance himself further from the pretty boy look of his past, and to be able to play more rugged and masculine characters, just like he did in the Iron Claw. Of course, all of this is pure speculation since Zach has stuck to his injury explanation ever since. But as people on the internet have noticed, his facial structure has noticeably improved since the botched reveal, suggesting he may have undergone additional procedures to fix the damage. In 2022, at the age of 35, it's possible that Zach may have had some jawline filler. There is now a smoother transition from his chin to the body of the mandible. It's also possible though that he may have had a revision of that lower jaw implant. When you look at the gonial angles, they do appear less wide, so could this be a revision of his prior implants? Maybe. Whatever the real story is, there's no denying the fact that Zach Efron has completely transformed from the Disney boy he once was. Additionally, the Iron Claw was also his first true

16:00critical success ever since he tried to pivot away from his roots. But simply, after so many strange missteps and failed reinventions, we might be witnessing the final form of Zach Efron, one which allows him to become the versatile actor he always wanted to be. But will it work, or is he just trading one typecast for another? Only time will tell.