Zac Efron’s Plastic Surgery: How He’s Explained His Changing Look Over The Years

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• Zac Efron’s appearance has changed since fans fell in love with him in the High School Musical movies.
• Fans accused Zac of getting plastic surgery after he looked so different in an Earth Day special in 2021.
• Zac broke his silence on the plastic surgery rumors in September 2022.
• He’s explained how his frightening jaw injury from 2013 relates to these rumors.

Zac Efron, 35, has been the subject of plastic surgery speculation as of late. The actor’s appearance has obviously changed since his time starring as Troy Bolton in the High School Musical movies, and some social media buzz has said it’s because of plastic surgery. The rumors surfaced when Zac looked very different in a video with Bill Nye to promote an Earth Day special in April 2021. Fans accused Zac of getting work done on his jaw, and after months of staying quiet, he finally responded to the plastic surgery rumors in September 2022.

Below, HollywoodLife breaks down Zac’s explanations about his changing appearance and whether or not he’s truly gotten plastic surgery.

What Happened To Zac Efron’s Jaw?

Zac broke his jaw in November 2013. The 17 Again star had been running through his house in socks, slipped on the wet floor, and smacked his chin against the granite corner of a fountain. Zac opened about the accident in the cover story for Men’s Health’s Oct. 2022 issue, published on September 7. He recalled that when he regained consciousness, his chin bone was hanging off his face. Zac explained that the masseter muscles that are used for chewing usually work together with the other muscles of the face “like a symphony,” but that didn’t happen while he was injured. Zac had to go to physical therapy to mediate the injury, but he took time off while in Australia filming his Netflix show Down to Earth. That was why he looked so different in the Earth Day special from April 2021.

“The masseters just grew,” Zac told Men’s Health, which was the first time he publicly responded to the plastic surgery rumors. “They just got really, really big.”

A week after his Men’s Health story was published, Zac was asked about “jaw gate” and the accident in an interview with Entertainment Tonight, while promoting his film The Greatest Beer Run Ever at the Toronto International Film Festival 2022. Zac called the plastic surgery rumors “funny,” before noting how serious the jaw injury really was. “It sucked. I almost died, but we’re good,” he said.

Did Zac Efron Have Plastic Surgery?

Zac has never admitted to actually having plastic surgery in his life. He told Men’s Health that he never even heard about the speculation saying he got work done on his jaw, until his mom Starla Baskett called him and asked. “If I valued what other people thought of me to the extent that they may think I do, I definitely wouldn’t be able to do this work,” he said in the interview.

The Dirty Grandpa actor reiterated how his mom informed him about “jaw gate” in his ET interview. “I never really read the internet, so – I don’t care,” Zac said. He explained that he only spoke out about the plastic surgery rumors once he noticed the “direction” that the gossip was going.

Zac also explained to Men’s Health that his physical appearance changed because of his training to get the beach bod for the Baywatch movie that came out in 2017. “That Baywatch look, I don’t know if that’s really attainable,” he said. “There’s just too little water in the skin. 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.”