Zac Efron, Before and After

Before he became every teenage girl’s fantasy prom date, Zac got his first recurring role on the TV series Summerland. He was just 16 here, with a gap between his teeth and shaggy hair like Justin Bieber. But already, those twinkling blue eyes were downright magnetic!

When High School Musical premiered two years later, he became his generation’s celebrity crush overnight. Even his co-star, Vanessa Hudgens, was blown away by his good looks during the audition process. (“She was so smitten. She said, ‘He’s too cute. I can’t read with him.’ She had a meltdown,” said casting director Natalie Hart.³) 

But there’s one thing to notice here—his nose. Back then, it was just a tad bulbous and ever so slightly more prominent, by Hollywood standards.

In 2007, he landed on People magazine’s list of the 100 Most Beautiful People of the year—and you can see why. “When we first met Zac, we felt he had the quality of what we’d call a matinee idol,” said Hart. “He was stunning, but he wasn’t cocky, which isn’t something you’d find in young people. He had an accessibility. We knew he had the capability of being a leading man.”³

After High School Musical 3 finished filming in the summer of 2008, he stepped out that fall with a new look. He was cute before, but I think we can all agree that this is a whole new level of handsome. The slicked-back hair and barely-there five o’ clock shadow definitely make him look more grown-up. But could it also be something to do with his nose?

Is this real life? Seriously, how did he get this pretty?! At 21, Zac debuted a sun-kissed sandy blonde hair colour along with a hint of stubble. (But later that night, he somehow lost out to Robert Pattinson for “Teen Choice Hottie of the Year,” a title he had won in 2007.)

But don’t let his tousled hair and sparkly eyes distract you from what else might be going on here. I’m talking about what appears to be a more refined, angular nose. 

Just when you thought he’d reached peak handsome, then came Zac’s buzz cut era. Naturally, he has the most perfectly straight hairline I’ve ever seen, because of course he does. The man even has beautiful eyelashes. (A few years before, he was accused of wearing falsies, to which he replied: “I have never worn false eyelashes in my entire life. That’s all me.”⁴)

In 2012, Zac took inspo from fellow teen hunk Robert Pattinson for this artfully disheveled hairstyle, worn with more facial hair than ever before. I can’t help but think this mustache was a deliberate move to distance himself from his Disney “pretty boy” image and get taken seriously as a leading man. Also notice how much bonier his nose looks now, in contrast to the rounded, bulbous shape that it had before.

If Zac looks worse for wear here, it’s because he was battling an addiction to drugs and alcohol at the time. After reports of out-of-control partying and erratic behaviour on the set of Neighbors, he quietly sought and completed treatment at a rehab facility in 2013. “It’s a never-ending struggle,” he said of his issues with addiction. “I was drinking a lot, way too much.”⁵

But that wasn’t the only challenge he faced that year. In November 2013, it was reported that he broke his jaw and suffered a gash that needed stitches, after slipping on a puddle of water outside his home.⁶

Only two months after the fall, he was back on the red carpet, looking remarkably good for someone whose “chin bone was hanging off his face” (as he recently described the accident)⁷. But in 2014, he wasn’t that dramatic: “I have a fountain in my house. That’s kind of dope, right? So I was running through and slipped on water and hit my chin on the fountain in my house. It’s not a big fountain, but it’s a fountain in my house.”⁸ (Notice how the location has now changed from outside to inside his house.)

To repair his jaw, he had to have it wired shut. “I was drinking foods for six weeks—only liquid foods. It sucked. I lost, like, 10-12 pounds.”⁸

By the following year, he had seemingly gained that weight back, if the contours of his jawline here are any indication. In fact, his lower face now looks exactly the same as it did in 2013—even after undergoing radical jaw surgery. Was his surgeon just that good?

“What possesses a grown man to book an appointment at the salon, show up, and ask for the tips of his hair dyed blonde in 2016?” mused one writer when Zac stepped out with dark roots and bleached tips.⁹ It wasn’t a personal style choice, though—he did it for his role in Baywatch, which came out the following year. To get a lifeguard physique, he was also training hard and cutting carbs. “When I shot Baywatch, I didn’t have a carb for, like, six months. I almost lost my mind.”¹⁰

By the time his next red carpet appearance rolled around, he looked noticeably scruffier. After Baywatch wrapped, “I started to develop insomnia and I fell into a pretty bad depression, for a long time,” he later revealed. “Something about that experience burned me out. I had a really hard time recentering. Ultimately they chalked it up to taking way too many diuretics for way too long, and it messed something up.”⁷

Even though he’s flirted with blonde hair before, Zac, 31, took everyone by surprise when he went fully platinum in 2019. This time, however, it wasn’t for a role—he explained that he did it because he “lost a bet.” As for whether it would become permanent: “That would be so much work and chemicals, I doubt it.”¹¹

When Zac took part in an “Earth Day Musical” special for Facebook Watch, images of the 33-year-old’s “new face” quickly went viral. Fans immediately noticed his more prominent jawline, which had a much wider, squared-off shape. But the “Jaw-gate” speculation didn’t stop there. Others observed that his face seemed puffier, with fuller lips and cheeks.

When he walked the red carpet a year later, any changes to his jaw area were no longer visible. That fall, he also spoke out on the plastic surgery rumours. Apparently, he’d been seeing a physical therapist to help him recover from his 2013 injury, but stopped while on sabbatical in Australia during the pandemic. “The masseters just grew. They just got really, really big.”⁷ He also said he no idea about “Jaw-gate” until his mother called to ask him if he’d gotten plastic surgery. (Is that believable? I say no!)

He returned to the red carpet in 2024, and dare I say it? This is the healthiest and most handsome that he’s looked in almost a decade. Not only is there no evidence of “Jaw-gate,” his face also appears a little fuller, like it was before his extreme dieting for Baywatch. Sure, he’s aged out of his “pretty boy” image, but the new, more mature Zac—complete with scruffy facial hair—is not too shabby!

It’s been almost two decades since Zac first stole our hearts as high school student Troy Bolton—so of course he doesn’t look the same now, as a 36-year-old man. But does aging alone explain his shrinking nose, or the changes to his jawline in 2021?

“His nose looks different,” says Dr. Daniel Barrett. “You can see the bridge is actually more narrow, and the tip is a little more refined. [But it’s] very hard to tell. Definitely some Botox. You can see the forehead lines he has [in 2012], they’re not there [by 2018].”¹²

“It is interesting that it isn’t until seven years later [after his accident] that Zac’s now saying those are the reasons we’re seeing changes in his jaw and facial structure,” says Dr. Gary Motykie. “There’s a lot of things about this that don’t make perfect sense.”¹³

“He’s lost that chiseled, masculine look,” he adds. “Sometimes, guys will play around with hormones or steroids and things that can make the face appear more bloated. If something was done as far as fillers... I’m suspicious that Botox was done to his brow, and filler was done to his mid-face, cheeks and lips.”¹⁴

As for his lower face, some doctors suspect he underwent more radical procedures. “It looks like some liposuction [under the chin], some mandibular implants placed [to augment the jaw], and probably a chin implant,” says Dr. David Alessi.¹⁵

“You can definitely see that the chin looks different, it looks more prominent, so there was either a chin implant or a pretty heavy filler,” says Dr. Konstantin Vasyukevich. “In the jawline, the angles look a lot more prominent... so again, either an implant or filler was placed here, so the whole lower part of the face looks different. The biggest change that I see here is the change in the cheeks... the front of the cheeks looks very full. Obviously, there was a filler there or maybe fat grafting.”¹⁶

But Zac is back to looking like his old self these days... so maybe the implants were removed, or it was just filler, after all!

“Typically, a fractured jaw is not going to cause symmetric facial jaw hypertrophy, cheek augmentation and fuller lips,” says Dr. Algie Labrasca. “Typically, something like this is going to be related to facial filler.”¹⁷