Zac Efron opens up about agoraphobia, how he got into shape for ‘Baywatch’: ‘Fell into a pretty bad depression’

Being an actor is not easy, and it certainly has not been that way for Zac Efron, who recently opened up about his physical and mental health struggles in a new interview for Men’s Health magazine’s October 2022 cover.
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The 34-year-old actor, who has acted in movies like ‘High School Musical‘, ‘17 Again‘ and such, opened up about his life, especially in the post-pandemic phase, sharing that he “sequestered himself in ron Bay, a beachy haven in Australia”, “slept on a hammock in the trees”, “dated a civilian” and “took moonlit swims with phosphorescent plankton”.

Efron shared that he intends to return to ron Bay, where he is “in a van trying to travel and see as much of the world as [he] can, or just hiking in the woods and camping”. He also told the outlet that he has “ten T-shirts, five pairs of workout shorts, a couple pants, a couple sweatshirts, and two Lululemon shorts-and-hoodie tracksuits that he wears all the time”.

The most striking confession that the actor made, however, was when he talked about his agoraphobia, which is basically a “fear of going outside and being in public places or of being in a situation from which it might be difficult to escape or in which help might not be available”, as defined the Cambridge dictionary.
Efron was quoted as telling Men’s Health, “I just don’t go out. People in large groups, it triggers my agoraphobia.”

While he did not talk about this fear in detail, had previously quoted Dr Samir Parikh, director, Department of Mental Health and Behavioral Sciences, Fortis Healthcare as saying that multiple theories and contributing factors have been suggested for contributing towards the development of agoraphobia, but, no single causative factor has been fully implicated.

“Agoraphobia is treatable. The person suffering is often ridiculed for a lack of confidence and courage and may even be snubbed others. Often people may choose to hide their symptoms in fear of embarrassment. It is imperative to encourage a supportive environment for the earliest identification and adequate psychiatric and psychological intervention,” he had said.

Efron, somewhere else in the interview, also said that he does not want the ‘Baywatch‘ body anymore, stating that he does not 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, 2 to 3 percent body fat,” he was quoted as saying.

The actor also said that apart from taking diuretics, he was also “overtraining and eating the same three meals every day”, and was not “sleeping enough”; “if filming stopped at midnight, he would still wake up at 4.00 am to train”. He also called the process of building the Baywatch body “devastating”. “I started to develop insomnia 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 recentering,” he told the publication.

Efron also talked about a rather serious accident that left his jaw broken, with the internet speculating he had a face surgery. During recovery, he had to work with a special and do physical therapy.
Calling it “jaw-gate”, the actor said he was not aware that social media was abuzz with stories about his face, until his mother called to ask if he had had a plastic surgery done.
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