The bed-head hair, triple-dip lashes, and seaglass-blue eyes that are Efron greet you en masse at Philadelphia's Ritz-Carlton. The St. Jude medal around his neck? A memento from the movie, and good-luck charm. Who can measure his candlepower? William Blake described his opposite when he wrote, "He whose face gives no light, shall never be a star."
Efron's air - a whiff of the Hollywood Hills by way of California's Central Coast - is unassuming. He strikes a stranger as both casual and conscientious. As a kid growing up in Arroyo Grande, near San Luis Obispo, he was both a jock and a nerd. "My parents encouraged me to excel - even though I was the shortest kid on the basketball team, I had a great jump shot." And straight A's.
Look at the 22-year-old in the sky-blue shirt and you think: Risky Business-era Tom Cruise. Listen to his thoughtful responses and you think again: Good Will Hunting-era Matt Damon.
Efron has no regrets about deferring his 2006 admission to the University of Southern California. "This is my career prime time," he says matter-of-factly. "My parents are giving me grief about college, but I want to see where this takes me. If this" - his unexpected win at the Hollywood roulette wheel - "had not happened, I'd be graduating from college now."
But it did happen. And it made him one of the most photographed and gossiped-about people in America, a teen multimillionaire whose main splurge is "small electronics devices with an Apple logo on them."
He shrugs off the tabloid headlines and speculations. "You gotta laugh," he says. To clarify: Yes, he is keeping company with High School Musical costar Vanessa Hudgens. No, much as he admires other actors who made the passage from small to big screen, he would rather be himself than the next Johnny Depp. And no, "I don't go to Hollywood clubs very often. That culture is not my culture."
