A leading man with a Marine's work ethic
IT'S A WARM SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA morning, and I'm
meeting Zac Efron in Studio City at a place called Weddington Golf &
Tennis. With a name that stuffy, I expect marble and money. The course
turns out to be public, with a plastic-cup snack bar where a waitress,
without looking up, informs the 24-year-old movie star that she doesn't
take credit cards. They've reserved us a private tee, which is
approximately 4 feet away from the adjacent public one.
Here at
the practice range, Efron—in T-shirt, oversized cap, shorts, and
Vans—strolls around in disarming anonymity, though to be fair, it's hard
for even the preeminent teen pinup of the 2000s to attract notice in a
crowd that includes this many codgers in lavender pants. After talking
and meandering (not especially well) through a bucket of golfballs, we
encounter Roger Dunn, a California golf-shop magnate who gives lessons
wearing a Panama hat and smoky sunglasses. We'd heard that Dunn is just
shy of his 50th year of teaching, and he's been introduced to us as a
man of considerable local repute. Mostly Dunn has something to teach,
and Efron is drawn to that.
"I could pick up almost anything,"
Efron had told me earlier. "If you put it in front of me, I could always
find a way to tackle it. I was never a natural at anything, but I could
always outwork everybody." He'd mentioned Bruce Lee, a man he's been
reading about. "What you got from him was the work ethic," Efron said.
"Constant
diligence. He was so focused, constantly pushing his body." And so, at
the eventual behest of the old teacher, the former star of
High School Musical
sets up on the range, absorbing Dunn's sharp tips and rebukes. Dunn
tells him to watch his back foot ("Keep it steady"), twist his wrists on
the follow-through ("Rotate, come on, give me a break"), and focus
("Aw, there you moved your feet").
To illustrate a point about
how golf uses martial-arts-style balance, he asks me to push against his
right biceps. Again, this gentleman is about 80, so I confess to being a
little tentative with the pressure. Wrong call. "You're mad at
somebody, you say, 'Get away from me,' and then give them a full shove,"
Dunn says, and then, in a move reminiscent of Bruce Lee himself, he
hauls off and shoves me.
This goes on for 20 minutes. Half a
dozen strokes later, Efron's hitting a 7-iron 175 yards. "That's why I
like to work with younger people," Dunn says. "I like to work with
everyone, but young people learn faster."
If he knows, or cares, that he's talking to a movie star, he hasn't given the first indication.
"What's your first name?"
"Zac."
"Zac. I'll remember that. I don't have many Zacs."
After
a few minutes and the arrival of his actual student, Dunn nods
provisional approval of the "It's a start" kind. Efron pays him for the
half lesson and promises to remember what he's heard.
TEEN-DREAM STARDOM CAN GO A NUMBER of ways, most of which are down.
Imagine a half-formed 18-year-old version of yourself, in all its
rubbery fumbling or furious egomania or bruised shyness, and give it VIP
access to the globe and the eardrum-destroying adoration of millions
of fans. Then imagine thinking, just years removed, "I should
definitely take that job where I train like a Marine."
This goes some way in explaining what Efron is doing in
The Lucky One.
Based on a book by chick-lit specialist Nicholas Sparks, the film
stars Efron as a Marine back from Iraq. The man has ghosts in his head
and a hole in his heart shaped like bombshell costar Taylor Schilling,
whose character is officially American cinema's all-time hottest
dog-kennel owner. Efron's performance is restrained, his speech crisp
and tentative. He cut his hair. There's no singing.
The Lucky One
required becoming not just a leading man but also a believable Marine.
"I didn't feel like I was the type of guy to actually portray them
accurately," Efron says during a break from the tee. There was a lot
I'd have to learn."
Fortunately, he learns quickly. Efron and
director Scott Hicks first decamped to Marine Corps Base Camp Pendleton
in California, where in his first meetings with Marines who were back
from two or three tours, the seriousness of the role hit home—as did
the mountain of physical and mental preparation he had ahead. "They
were my age," Efron says, "23, 24, even younger. And most of the staff
sergeants were not huge guys. They were about my height, 5'9", 5'10",
some shorter, but all very stocky. And I'm there in a backward hat and
Vans, walking around like I'm still in college."
He pauses for a long time.
"It's much different from the lifestyle I'm living over here," he says.
Where do you start the conversation? I didn't know what to say, what
questions were inaccurate."
Efron trained at a simulated firing
range; he was taught how, in full kit on 110-degree Santa Clarita
afternoons, to clear empty cabins and sheds. That wasn't even the
hardest part. He also needed to whip himself into Marine shape, a task
he would accomplish with a surfeit of protein and the help of trainer
Logan Hood, a former Navy SEAL.
Efron was 145 pounds, lean and cardio fit, when he began training for the film. By the time
The Lucky One
wrapped 4 months later, he'd gained 18 1/2 pounds. "Substantially
bigger," Hood says. On a guy with a slight frame like Efron's, 18 1/2
pounds makes a big difference. "You don't really have to be 6 feet and
225 pounds to look big on camera."
For 4 months, 5 days a week,
Efron's day began at 5:30 a.m. with protein ("a shake and, you know,
an eight-egg omelet," he says), a drive to Long Beach, and a workout on
a full stomach. "I got used to it at the time, but I wouldn't
recommend it," he says. "It's not practical to do for a long period of
time. You feel this debilitating soreness. This kind of stuff, going
golfing, you can't do." He wound up eating six to eight times a day and
sucking down shakes between meals, with a daily target of 3,500
calories.
Still, the results spoke for themselves: Efron was
lifting weights he'd never been able to lift before. "You get this
strange sense of power as those weights increase," Efron says. "By the
end of the movie I didn't recognize myself. You hear about guys like
Christian Bale who dive into it and are really able to transform. I've
always wondered if I had the willpower to actually do it. And I'll
always have pride around the sense that I can."
YOU WANT TO GET LUNCH?" EFRON ASKS, and then I'm
following him through Los Angeles in a rented car that's not as nice
as his. He's suggested Hugo's, a fine place next to a gas station and
full of beautiful people, aggressively healthy foods (sauteed leafy
greens, black bean cakes, quinoa, and a green juice that has "a lot of
chlorophyll in it"). The parking lot is full, so we head one block
west and park in front of someone's house. We walk back through the
residential neighborhood, seemingly the only two pedestrians in the
city of Los Angeles.
For someone making the tricky and
paparazzi-stalked transition from young-adult actor to leading man,
Efron seems to travel with a disarming lack of self-destructive
behaviors. He was born north of here, in San Luis Obispo, to active,
grounded parents; as a youth he attended public schools and stuck to
sports, surfing, skateboarding, and BMX. But he always seemed to be
pushing himself. "We would go bowling and everyone else would be
having fun, and me, my dad, and my little brother wanted to actually
learn how to bowl. Even to this day I have trouble just going bowling.
I want to win. It's horrible sometimes," he says with a laugh.
Apparently, occasional bouts of bowling-based insanity are the extent
of Efron's debauchery. He's "frugal" with his money and doesn't ingest
anything with a lengthy list of chemicals. His biggest controversy
entailed dropping a condom on the ground at a movie premiere, which is a
funny sort of controversy to have, since it actually suggests that
the guy is responsible.
When he begins working on a movie,
Efron says he tells his friends he'll be "MIA for a while," and
between projects he sticks mostly to the Valley. "The city's a strange
spot," he says once we've been seated. "I don't feel like I fit in
there." He has no Twitter account, and when he talks about himself he
tries to make sure "it's about the work."
There's plenty of it. He lent his voice to
Dr. Seuss' The Lorax, an animated film released in March; the weekend before our interview, he'd completed filming on
The Paperboy,
a death-row drama with John Cusack, Nicole Kidman, and Matthew
McConaughey. He has his own production company. He's finished shooting
a movie with filmfest favorite Ramin Bahrani. He's been having dinner
lately with Warren Beatty, a master with wisdom to share.
"Look, I was just a musical-theater guy," Efron says. "I would have
been happy to do that for the rest of my life. But there's something
about me that's always searching for the more challenging route, and
the actors that I really admire are always picking things out of their
comfort zones, trying to stretch to see where they can go. It just
seems like the road less traveled."
JACKED LIKE ZAC
Look like a Marine in 4 short months Zac Efron's trainer, Logan Hood of Epoch Training, used these four principles in transforming the young actor's physique.
Control the variables
Building a Marine-caliber body calls for a comprehensive approach.
"Training is only one piece of the puzzle," Hood says. "Sleep is huge.
Stress is huge. Fuel you're putting in your body is an enormous
component. But nobody brags about having followed a regimented diet for 4
months." You have to decide what's more important: eating that
entire pizza or having the body you want.
Opt for quality over quantity
Efron worked out 5 days a week, about an hour each time. "That's
another misconception," Hood says. "If you're eating appropriately and
getting enough rest, you don't need to train all day. All the work's
happening when you're outside of the gym."
Go old-school
You don't need fancy equipment. Hood put Efron through a regimen of
"typical old powerlifting stuff": squats, dead-lifts, heavy overhead
presses, weighted pullups—simple exercises that over time allow for
heavier and heavier weights.
Stick with the plan
Efron didn't bulk up overnight. Nobody can: "It's months and months of
process and diet," Hood says. "What people see on the screen is a guy
who basically immersed himself into a training process over a period
of time. It's more than just doing exercise and taking more
protein."
