Zac Efron’s face was puffy because he broke his jaw

Zac Efron has a new exclusive in Men’s Health. He’s promoting an interesting new project, The Greatest Beer Run Ever. While it sounds like another meathead comedy, it actually has some depth to it as the beer run is to his buddies who are fighting in Vietnam. I am the resident Zac apologist. I just like him. I worry about him, because I think he’s a bit lost and doesn’t surround himself with the right people, but I’m always pulling for him. When I watched his Down to Earth with Zac Efron series, which I enjoyed far more than I expected, it felt like Zac had found a path that was bringing him peace. But what everyone else took from it, apparently, was that Zac had ‘let himself go’ and was sporting a Dad Bod. Nothing against proud Dad Bodders, but Zac had no such thing. People just couldn’t handle an uncut Zac. Then he was filmed with a decidedly bulkier jaw and speculation as to why went amok. Most fingers pointed to plastic surgery. According to Zac, it was from a broken jaw and not elective jaw work.

About four years ago, in the span of a year and a half, he tore his ACL, dislocated his shoulder, broke his wrist, and threw out his back. He also shattered his jaw, he says, though that was not a training injury. He’d been running through his house in socks and slipped, smacking his chin against the granite corner of a fountain. He lost consciousness, and when he woke up, he recalls, his chin bone was hanging off his face.

When I ask him about this, he tells me that the masseter muscles, used for chewing, work together with the other muscles of the face “like a symphony”; when he was injured, the muscles on the inside of his face and jaw had to compensate. He works with a specialist and does physical therapy to mediate this, he says, but in Australia he took some time off from that, too. “The masseters just grew,” he says, shrugging. “They just got really, really big.”

Efron says he didn’t know about Jaw-gate until his mother called to ask if he’d gotten plastic surgery, because, though he appreciates that social media can be useful for promoting projects he cares about, he generally avoids it. This is a survival tactic, one that he has been honing since he became a public figure at 17. “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.”

[From Mens Health via DListed]

As the current photos show, and the interviewer notes, whatever the reason for Zac’s fuller jaw is gone. I know nothing about jaw muscles and whether they grow. I imagine a busted jaw would reshape a jaw, possibly temporarily. Honestly, I’m more suspect of how he broke his jaw, if he did. I’m a massive klutz. I’m typing this with a finger I broke trying to catch a falling plastic jug. I have never come close to rendering myself unconscious running in socks – and I’ve slipped in socks plenty. Granted I don’t have a granite fountain inside my house, but it all still sounds, well, dramatic. I hope old habits haven’t returned to haunt him. He looks much healthier now and he sounds good. I hope he has people in his life who are invested in him continuing that.

Because it’s Men’s Health, there is a lot of discussion about Zac’s body. Even the article points out its all anyone talks about to the point of over-scrutiny. There’s a pull quote going around from Zac about his Baywatch body. He said, “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.” He went on to describe overtraining, not sleeping and how it led to depression. Recovery took six months. He wanted the information in the interview because he doesn’t want anyone trying to emulate that physique. Leaning into my overprotection of Zac, I feel for him that so much space is given to how his body looks that he feels compelled to give disclaimers. This interview was no exception. After spending the day with him and noting all of his insecurities about how his physique is perceived, maybe ask him about his workout but don’t devote the opening two paragraphs to his left bicep.

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