Zac Efron

Zac Efron is an American actor and singer whose two-decade career has produced multiple defining American film and TV roles — particularly his 2006–2008 lead role as Troy Bolton across the Disney Channel High School Musical film series. He was born Zachary David Alexander Efron on October 18, 1987, in San Luis Obispo, California. His father David Efron was an electrical engineer at the Diablo Canyon Power Plant, and his mother Starla Baskett was a homemaker. He was raised in Arroyo Grande, California, where he began acting at age 11.

His breakthrough came at age 18 in 2006 — when he was cast as Troy Bolton (the East High School basketball team captain) in Kenny Ortega's Disney Channel made-for-TV musical film High School Musical. The January 20, 2006 first-broadcast film attracted 7.7 million viewers — launching the foundational late-2000s Disney Channel teen-musical franchise. The two subsequent High School Musical 2 (2007) and High School Musical 3: Senior Year (2008) Disney Channel and theatrical-release sequels produced his late-2000s American teen-film public profile.

His 2007 lead role as Link Larkin in Adam Shankman's Hairspray (the John Waters 1988 film and 2002 Broadway musical adaptation, alongside Nikki Blonsky, John Travolta, and Michelle Pfeiffer) launched his transition to mainstream feature-film commercial success. His 2010s film career produced multiple American films — particularly Burr Steers's 17 Again (2009, opposite Matthew Perry), The Lucky One (2012, the Nicholas Sparks-novel adaptation), Neighbors (2014, the Nicholas Stoller comedy opposite Seth Rogen), Baywatch (2017, the David Hasselhoff TV-show film adaptation), and Bill Condon's musical biopic The Greatest Showman (2017, in which he played Phillip Carlyle alongside Hugh Jackman).

His 2019 lead role as Ted Bundy in Joe Berlinger's Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil and Vile launched his pivot toward dramatic film roles in his 30s. His 2023 lead role as Kevin Von Erich in Sean Durkin's The Iron Claw produced his later dramatic transformation public profile. He has been with American actress Vanessa Valladares since 2020.

His name Zac is the English short form of Zachary (from the Hebrew Zekharyah meaning "the Lord remembers"). Zac has been climbing in American naming since the 1980s.