Remember that time last April when people thought people thought Zac Efron got plastic surgery because of an Earth Day video he posted with Bill Nye? And Efron’s Australian friend came forward to defend him? Not really? Well, he remembers it, and in a new interview with Men’s Healththe The Greatest Beer Run Ever star pours water on the fiery rumors with an objectively silly (and painful) story.
Despite the extensive training the actor has undergone in the past for films like Baywatch and neighbors, Efron didn’t injure himself that way. Per Efron, his jaw broke in the most Risky Business way a bone can. Whilst racing through the house in socks, Efron slipped and conked his chin on a granite fountain, knocking himself unconscious. When he came to he, he says, he could see and feel his chin bone dangling from his face.
The break was far from Efron’s first injury—four years ago in the span of just a year and a half, he reportedly reported a torn ACL, dislocated shoulder, broken, and injured back. The shattered jaw, however, was the most visible, and the most hotly discussed. Efron says the altered size and shape of his face in the Earth Day video was a result of his masseter muscles, which allow the mouth to chew, being inflamed. “The masseters just grew,” he says. “They just got really, really big.”
Although Efron didn’t directly use the phrase “Jaw-gate,” he did appear to touch on his experience with the controversy, asserting that brushing off online fanfare is just another day on the job.
“If I valued what other people thought of me to the extent that they may think I do,” he says, “I definitely wouldn’t be able to do this work.”
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