Zac Efron: His 5 Best (& 5 Worst) Roles According To IMDb
Zac Efron’s career started in the early 2000s with a series of relatively unknown films before he shot to fame at the center of the High School Music franchise. At the same time, he took on a few well-loved roles before attempting to leave his career as a teen icon behind and move towards more serious acting.
Now, he is one of the most famous people in the world, more well-known for his excellent talent than his time at the center of a children’s franchise.
10 BEST: Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil and Vile (2019): 6.6
If there is one Zac Efron film which is about as far from High School Musical as is physically possible, then it's Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil and Vile, one of Efron's most recent prominent roles. Efron ditches the schoolboy look in favor of a realistic portrayal of one of the most famous serial killers of all time. Of course, his natural good looks and charm help him form the misleadingly delightful side of Bundy, but the murderous side is a new direction for Efron.
9 WORST: Scoob! (2020): 5.7
Scoob! makes a lot of controversial decisions that harm the legacy of Scooby-Doo. Not only did the film replace Frank Welker as Fred (he has voiced Fred consistently for more than fifty years) with Efron himself, but it left behind the charm the animated series once had.
There was a lot of hype surrounding this release, and then a whole lot of disappointment from fans who were looking for a revival of big-budget Mystery Inc. adventures.
8 BEST: Me And Orson Welles (2008): 6.7
Period dramas are often a hit or miss genre, with their success determined by characterization. Me And Orson Welles manages to land a place in Zac Efron’s top five, thanks to well throughout writing. He takes on the lead role of Richard Samuels, a teenager performing in the Orson Welles’ stage adaptation of Julius Caesar. Both Efron and Christian McKay were well-received.
7 WORST: At Any Price (2012): 5.6
Relatively fresh from High School Musical, Zac Efron landed a leading role in At Any Price back in 2012. While Roger Ebert enjoyed the film, critics and audiences were much more mixed in their reviews, citing melodramatic acting from across the cast and cliched moments as the film’s weakest points. Of which there were many.
6 BEST: Liberal Arts (2012): 6.7
While Efron doesn’t take a major role in this film, he was put into a position that allows him to add a much more eccentric side to his personality than usual. He played Nat, a college student and friend of John Magaro’s Dean. The comedy-drama wasn’t a big player at the box office but made a splash at film festivals.
5 WORST: The Derby Stallion (2005): 5.5
Before High School Musical, Efron had already established himself an acting career, appearing in a variety of small pictures. One of those is 2005’s The Derby Stallion, a film about Efron’s character caring for a horse and eventually entering a race. The film hasn't been well-remembered by critics or audiences alike, who cite an uninteresting story and an abundance of cliches as reasons behind their negativity.
4 BEST: The Disaster Artist (2017): 7.4
Just like Liberal Arts, Efron doesn’t have a major role in The Disaster Artist. In fact, he appears in just one scene and his role is particularly interesting.
His character, Dan Janjigian, portrayed Chris R in The Room, so the majority of the time Efron is on screen, he is playing someone who is playing someone else. Quite the acting inception. He mirrors Janjigian’s performance just as well as everyone else in The Disaster Artist does, making this a subtle and well-used cameo.
3 WORST: Baywatch (2017): 5.5
If there was one thing no-one ever needed to be remade, it was Baywatch. Seth Gordon allowed Dwayne Johnson and Zac Efron to team up and star in the fateful comedy which managed to perform well at the box office despite universally negative reviews. One particular accolade the film did land Efron was a Worst Actor nomination at the Golden Raspberry Awards in 2017; the film as a whole was nominated for Worst Picture.
2 BEST: The Greatest Showman (2017): 7.6
As a film, The Greatest Showman achieved an incredible amount of attention and made bucket loads of money. This was mostly down to some truly excellent songs and a few particularly strong performances (including Efron) but it was criticized for overuse of artistic license. On the whole, however, critics and audiences must have found a lot to love. It was nominated for the Musical/Comedy variant of the Best Motion Picture Golden Globe.
1 WORST: High School Musical 3: Senior Year (2008): 4.8
While critics could argue that the previous two High School Musical are hard to call ‘good’ examples of cinema, audiences and reviewers alike seem to view the conclusion to the trilogy as mediocre and disappointing. It was brought into action after the previous installments became successful, but failed to make the same impact on young fans, whose excitement trailed off. This film ends up with a 4.8 IMDb average and is Efron's worst-rated film role so far.