Zac Efron has admitted that he “fell into a pretty bad depression” when he trained for the 2017 film Baywatch.
The 34-year-old revealed how much of toll his strenuous fitness regime for the movie took on him mentally and physically as he spoke to Men’s Health.
Baywatch, which Efron starred in alongside Dwayne Johnson, was based on the hit 1990s TV show of the same title and focused on a group of lifeguards on a mission to save their bay from a criminal operation.
Efron famously went through vigorous training for the film to transform his physique, and revealed in his new interview the long-lasting effects on his health he developed as a result of training to achieve the ‘Baywatch body’.
“I started to develop insomnia,” the actor said.
“And I fell into a pretty bad depression, for a long time. Something about that experience burned me out. I had a really hard time re-centering.”
Efron said he took diuretic drugs and overtrained for his Baywatch role as he admitted his transformation isn’t “attainable” realistically.
He continued: “That Baywatch look, I don’t know if that’s really attainable. 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, two to three per cent body fat.”
Speaking further on his health effects from the training, he added: “Ultimately, they chalked it up to taking way too many diuretics for way too long, and it messed something up.”
Efron received attention for another transformation in April 2021, after he was seen in an advert promoting the Earth Day special from Bill Nye with a noticeably larger-looking jaw.
This led fans to believe the star had had plastic surgery on his face.
Efron denied this in his new interview as he explained he’d had a nasty accident where he smashed his chin, leaving the muscles inside his jaw (masseters) to compensate and grow bigger in effect.
“The masseters just grew,” Efron said. “They just got really, really big.”
The actor revealed he’s since been working with a specialist and does physical therapy which has helped him recover from his facial injury.
