Zac Efron has joined some of the biggest names in show business by getting his own star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.
The major career milestone saw his Iron Claw co-star Jeremy Allen White and good friend Miles Teller talk about Efron’s achievements from his early days as a High School Musical heartthrob to more recent efforts.
WATCH THE VIDEO ABOVE: Zac Efron’s appearance shocks fans.
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After celebrating at the ceremony, Efron took to Instagram to talk about the magical moment when he joined the ranks of Hollywood’s elite.
“What an honour,” he wrote, sharing a photo of himself crouching down on the red carpet next to his Walk of Fame star.
“I want to thank everyone who attended today.
“Miles, Jeremy, and Sean (Durkin) — your words mean more to me than you will ever know.
“It was a truly a humbling moment for me surrounded by those I love.”
Efron has more than 61 million followers on Instagram — and more than 6000 of them flocked to the comments section of his post to congratulate him.
“Welcome to the sidewalk buddy,” wrote Basic Instinct star Sharon Stone.
“Incredible! Much deserved my friend,” added actor Tanner Beard.
“Finally!!” wrote a third.
One fan wondered: “How did he not already have one? He’s Zac Efron!”
Tribute to Matthew Perry
During his Walk of Fame acceptance speech, Efron took a moment to honour his friend and 17 Again co-star Matthew Perry.
“I really also want to mention someone that’s not here today, and that’s Matthew Perry, who was so kind and generous with me while we worked on 17 Again together,” Efron said during his ceremony speech.
Efron described collaborating with Perry as “so much fun and it really did propel me and motivate me in so many ways. It really pushed me into the next chapter of my career and for that, thank you so much Matthew.”
“Thinking about you a lot today,” Efron said, appearing to get emotional.
Perry died at his Los Angeles home in October, aged 54.
Efron played the younger version of Perry’s 17 Again character in the 2009 romcom, in which Perry’s character is transformed back into his 17-year-old self in a chance to rewrite his life.
Perry had even recently expressed his desire to collaborate with Efron again, according to his friend, Athenna Crosby, who spent time with the Friends actor the day before he died.
“He said that he wanted to make a movie about his life, and he had worked with Zac Efron in the past on a movie and he said that he wanted Zac Efron to play him as a younger version,” Crosby told Entertainment Tonight last month.
“He was going to ask him soon to do that,” she added.
Efron told Extra TV in November that he was “hugely honoured” to learn about Perry’s hopes of casting him.
“It would be extraordinary to do and, of course, I’m just really still devastated by the fact he’s gone,” he said.
“We’ll see what happens.”
Efron’s changing face
Efron has been in the spotlight in recent times not because of his acting accolades, but because of his changed appearance.
In a recent clip of him talking about his new movie, some fans seemed to have trouble recognising the actor compared to how he used to look.
Last year, rumours began swirling that Efron had had plastic surgery.
And in the video shared to Entertainment Weekly’s Instagram page, in which Efron and his co-stars talk about wrestling film The Iron Claw, many fans remained perplexed.
“What happened to his face?” one person wondered.
“His face is huge now,” wrote another, while a third said his face “didn’t move” when he spoke.
Another, somewhat unkindly, said Efron now looked like Lord Farquaad from Shrek, who has an exaggeratedly square jaw.
However, Efron has already spoken about the changing shape of his face.
In October last year, he told Men’s Health magazine that he had broken his jaw in an accident at home.
He was running through the house in socks when he slipped, shattering his jaw after smacking his chin on the granite corner of a fountain.
Efron said he lost consciousness and woke up to “his chin bone hanging off his face”.
He had to have jaw surgery followed by physical therapy.
During his recovery, he explained, some of his facial muscles began “overcompensating” for the injury.
His facial muscles “just grew” and “got really, really big”, he said.
The 36-year-old admitted that he didn’t know about the plastic surgery gossip until his mother called him and asked him about it.
He added that he didn’t care if people still believed he’d had plastic surgery for cosmetic purposes.
“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.
– With CNN
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