Zac Efron

Biography

Zachary David Alexander Efron was born October 18, 1987 in San Luis Obispo, California. He is the son of Starla Baskett, a former secretary, and David Efron, an electrical engineer. He has a younger brother, Dylan. His surname, "Efron", is a Biblical place name, and comes from Zac's Polish Jewish paternal grandfather. The rest of Zac's recent ancestry is English, German, Scottish, and 1/16th Irish. Zac was raised in Arroyo Grande, CA. He took his first step toward acting at the age of eleven, after his parents noticed his singing ability. Singing and acting lessons soon led to an appearance in a production of "Gypsy" that ran 90 performances, and he was hooked.After appearing on-stage in "Peter Pan", "Auntie Mame", "Little Shop of Horrors" and "The Music Man", guest parts quickly followed on television series, including Firefly (2002), ER (1994), CSI: Miami (2002), NCIS (2003), and The Guardian (2001). After guest-starring in several episodes of Summerland (2004), Zac joined the regular cast as girl-crazy Cameron Bale. He also starred in several pilots, such as The Big Wide World of Carl Laemke (2003) and Triple Play (1989), and played an autistic child in the television movie Miracle Run (2004), alongside Mary-Louise Parker and Aidan Quinn. He graduated from Arroyo Grande High School in June 2006.Efron came to fame for starring in the Disney Channel original film High School Musical (2006), for which he won the Teen Choice Award for Breakout Star. He returned to the role of Troy Bolton in High School Musical 2 (2007), which broke cable TV records with 17.5 million viewers.He played title roles of the fantasy romance Charlie St. Cloud (2010) and the comedy 17 Again (2009), both from director Burr Steers, and as the lovable Link Larkin in 2007's smash hit musical…