Lautner isn’t alone in this experience. After playing a lead in Baywatch (a 2017 movie reboot of the popular 1990s TV series), fans associated Zac Efron with his chiseled physique and wasted no time pointing out when he shifted to more of a “dad bod.”
But in an interview with Men’s Health in 2022, Efron talked about how he never wants to resort to the methods it took to achieve that lifeguard body again, and in his opinion, nor should anybody else.
The picture-perfect body came at the price of diuretics, overtraining, poor sleep, and the same three meals every day. “I started to develop insomnia,” he said in the interview. “And I fell into a pretty bad depression for a long time.”
It took the actor six months after filming to feel normal again, he said in the interview.
He wants people who aspire to that body type to know he ruined his own health in pursuit of that goal. Efron told Men’s Health that moving forward, he is looking for deeper transformations in his career, not just physical transformations.
He’s gone on to bulk up and pile on muscle for his role as the tragic wrestling legend Kevin von Erich, but Efron told ExtraTV that he found the process more fun. “It was more heavy bodybuilding stuff… I wouldn’t do it today, but it’s really neat to do it for a character,” he said.
