Zac Efron has finally addressed plastic surgery rumours that stemmed from an apparent change in appearance - something he says there's a perfectly ordinary explanation for.
It was back in April 2021 that the rumour mill began churning out speculation that Efron had had plastic surgery on his face.
He had appeared in a clip promoting an Earth Day special with Bill Nye, showing off what some believed was a slightly more swollen jawline.
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Efron said he tends to stay off social media, so didn’t really have any idea about the reaction his face had been getting - but revealed it was his own mother who pointed out what the internet was saying.
However, it turns out there’s a perfectly natural reason for 'jaw-gate', as it became dubbed, with Efron speaking about the matter in a new interview with Men’s Health.
He explained to the outlet that he fell over in his home and broke his jaw in November 2013, with the accident meaning his face and jaw muscles have had to work extra hard ever since.
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Efron said that, while a person’s masseter muscles along muscles on their face should operate ‘like a symphony’, this was no longer the case for him after the injury.
He had been seeing a physical therapist to help with recovery, but had to briefly stop while filming season two of Netflix series Down to Earth in Australia last year.
"The masseters just grew," Efron, who stars in new film The Greatest Beer Run Ever, said.
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"They just got really, really big."
Efron said his mum told him about the attention his jawline was receiving, passing on the rumours that he had undergone plastic surgery.
According to Men’s Health, the actor ‘appreciates that social media can be useful for promoting projects he cares about’, but generally he avoids it – a survival tactic after being thrust into the limelight as a teenager.
"If I valued what other people thought of me to the extent that they may think I do,” Efron said.
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“I definitely wouldn't be able to do this work."
Efron said he’s currently going through another transformation – this time an intentional one, as he’s bulking for a new, yet-to-be-annnounced role.
But the star won’t be taking things to the extremes his did for 2017’s Baywatch, saying his chiselled physique then was not ‘attainable’.
He continued: "That Baywatch look, I don't know if that's really attainable. There's just too little water in the skin.
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"Like, it's fake; it looks CGI'd. And that required Lasix, powerful diuretics, to achieve. So I don't need to do that. I much prefer to have an extra, you know, 2 to 3 percent body fat."
Jess Hardiman