Zac Efron has been through, uh, troubling times lately. But after a very public stints in rehab and a very strange scuffle on skid row, it seems as though things are finally looking up for the heartthrob, especially with his latest role alongside Seth Rogen in Neighbors.
Being a child star has placed a lot of pressure on the High School Musical actor. Although he’s “grateful for every bit of that early success,” what followed were growing pains as he transitioned from Disney to adulthood, but now he’s opening up about his addiction in the latest issue of The Hollywood Reporter.
Keep on reading to see what he has to say about his road to recovery and his new movie after the jump.
On learning from his mistakes:
“No matter who you are, you face challenges growing up,” he says. “You go with your things, you learn, you have to. It’s impossible to lead an honest and fulfilling life as a man and not make mistakes and ‘fess up to them when you need to. But it’s especially humiliating when they happen to be so public and so scrutinized. When you have success young, and you accept the good things, you have to accept all of it. You have to accept the moments of glory but also a great responsibility. And that responsibility, to some degree, involves being a role model. At the same time, I’m a human being, and I’ve made a lot of mistakes. I’ve learned from each one.”
On his drug and alcohol addiction:
“I was drinking a lot, way too much,” he says, acknowledging there were drugs, too. “It’s never one specific thing. I mean, you’re in your 20s, single, going through life in Hollywood, you know? Everything is thrown at you. I wouldn’t take anything back; I needed to learn everything I did. But it was an interesting journey, to say the least.”
On that fight with a homeless man:
“A homeless guy, or vagrant, tapped on the driver’s-side window. Before I knew it, he [the friend] was out of the car, and they started fighting. I saw that [the homeless man] was carrying some sort of a knife, or shank, and I got out of the car to disarm him. At some point, he dropped the knife, and I got hit pretty hard in the face — and almost instantly the police were there to break up the fight.”
On the party atmosphere on the set of Neighbors:
“The best part of the shoot by far was hanging out with Seth and the guys,” he says. “The hardest part? Every single day was more or less a party. You went into this kind of dream state: You show up, it’s dark, and there’s a raging party. Drive home, and the sun’s up, go to sleep and then get back to set. Glow lights, girls in bikinis, electronic dance music blasting in between takes, people jumping around. It was pretty cool, but it was a lot. It was a lot. It sort of became real.”
Seth, on Zac’s performance:
“On the grand scale of things, he’s doing a pretty good job,” says Rogen. “He was a child actor, and you don’t need to have a sociology degree to see the pitfalls, especially as they transition to becoming an adult actor. But people are rooting for him. You can see his performance was incredibly good in the movie.”
Head on over to THR for more, and check out part of his interview below.
PHOTO CREDIT & SOURCE: Hollywood Reporter
