Zac Efron is not your average high-school kid anymore. The Baywatch star has come a long way from his High School Musical days, managing to go beyond the stereotypes that many thought would bind him after starring in the 2006 flick.
And this has to be attributed in no small part to his desire to experience the world before settling. His hunger for adventure would finally provide him the chance to star in The Iron Claw which needed him to step into the shoes of a pro-wrestler, a movie for which he would have to go all out on himself.
The work Zac Efron had to put in for The Iron Claw
Zac Efron had a busy 2022, starring in a sleuth of projects. He was filming The Family Affair till October, 2022. Post that, he would switch attention to A24’s The Iron Claw, which would see him take on the mantle of pro-wrestler Kevin Von Erich, a central cog of the Von Erich wrestling family.
Efron’s latest role would see him take on a role that he was not really acquainted with. While in conversation with Variety, he would shed some light on his experience, reflecting on how the process changed him. For starters, he would have to gain 15 pounds of muscle. Not an easy feat by any means.
Zac Efron had to undergo an unreal transformation for The Iron Claw
After spending many strenuous days at the gym, spending hours on volume training, he got where he wanted to in the end. And he couldn’t be happier. Efron said,
“The necessity to be perfect — it became an obsession. It was a singular focus for months. And your life goes out the window during prep. Then I was able to incorporate old-school body-building and Olympic lifting and really achieved that specific look of pro wrestlers, which was really hard.”
While he had to put a lot of effort in, he wasn’t disappointed with how it turned out to be. In an interview with Hollywood Reporter, Zac Efron continued,
“In the best way possible, I did not look anything like me. It was jarring at first, but we kind of put it together piece by piece.”
As he would admit, the transformation required a lot of work, but it was all worthwhile in the end.
Zac Efron faced a scare in the pool in Ibiza
No wonder Zac Efron was ecstatic about being a part of The Iron Claw. The movie was received well by critics, with a Rotten Tomatoes rating of 89% and an IMDb rating of 7.9. With box office returns in the region of $45 million on a $15 million budget, it was a commercial success as well. While the 36-year-old had a stellar showing at the box office, he had to be taken to the hospital this Friday.
Sources told TMZ that The Greatest Showman star had to be rushed to the hospital after suffering a minor swimming incident while in a pool at a villa in Ibiza. It came to light that Efron had to be pulled out of the pool in the aftermath of the accident. Much to fans’ relief, the actor was discharged the next morning, in the pink of health.
