Zachary David Alexander "Zac" Efron (born October 18, 1987) is an American
actor and
singer. He began acting in the early 2000s, and became known to young audiences after his roles in the
Disney Channel Original Movie High School Musical, the
WB series
Summerland, and the film version of the
Broadway musical
Hairspray.
Speaking to
Newsweek in June 2006, director
Adam Shankman described Efron as "arguably the biggest teen star in America right now."
In 2007, right before the release of
High School Musical 2,
Rolling Stone declared him the "poster boy for tweenyboppers" and featured him in their late August issue.
Early life and background
Efron was born in
San Luis Obispo, California and later moved to
Arroyo Grande, California. His father, David Efron, is an
engineer at a power plant, and his mother, Starla Baskett, is a former
secretary who worked at the same
power plant as Efron's father.
Efron had a self-described "normal childhood" in a
middle class family, and has a younger brother, Dylan.
Efron is of
Jewish ancestry and is an
agnostic, having never been religious.
He has said that he would "flip out" if he got a B and not an A in school, and that he was a "class clown".
Efron's father encouraged him to begin acting when Efron was eleven.
He subsequently appeared in theater productions at his high school,
worked in a theater called The Great American Melodrama and Vaudeville,
and began taking singing lessons.
Efron performed in plays such as
Gypsy,
Peter Pan, Or The Boy Who Wouldn't Grow Up,
Little Shop of Horrors, and
The Music Man. Efron was recommended to an agent in Los Angeles by his drama teacher, Robyn Metchik (the mother of actors
Aaron Michael Metchik and Asher Metchik).
He was later signed to the
Creative Artists Agency.
