If ZAC EFRON even so ventures outside his front door – paparazzi are ready to pounce. If Zac Efron yawns – celebrity bloggers pen screeds deliberating upon the inner workings of the twenty-two year old’s thoughts as he stares off into the distance. If Zac Efron sprouts a beard – then the odds are all to none that media will grill him about it on every leg of his latest worldwide press tour in support of new film ‘CHARLIE ST. CLOUD‘.

Efron first made on-screen waves as Cameron Bale in the TV show ‘Summerland’ (which also starred Jesse McCartney). But it was in 2006 as the ‘High School Musical’ franchise’s Troy Bolton, that Efron serenaded and danced his way into the hearts of a global audience of over 255 million. The next obvious role was of course, Link Larkin in 2007′s movie adaptation of ‘Hairspray’. Two ‘High School Musical’ sequels and a feature film opposite ’17 Again’ Matthew Perry later, saw Efron dabbling in Shakespeare as an aspiring thespian in ‘Me And Orson Welles’, opposite Claire Danes.

In inevitable real-time, as with Efron, the generation that had grown up belting ‘Breaking Free’ and ‘We’re All In This Together’, were growing… up. It would seem that Efron, acutely aware of the temporary shelf-lives of tween poster-boys, knew that he needed to dive head-first into darker depths than a 1930′s period-piece. And thus, Efron disengaged himself from a remake of the musical ‘Footloose’, to instead pursue the lead in the film adaptation of a book that had attracted a fierce bidding war between three film studios, even before the book had been published. Ben Sherwood’s ‘The Death And Life Of Charlie St. Cloud’ exhibited all the hallmarks of a Nicholas Sparks classic – easily translatable into a romantic drama for the big-screen.

Zac Efron’s last port-of-call on ‘Charlie St. Cloud’ promotional duties was in Sydney, Australia. While there, he gave us a ring…

COUP DE MAIN: First of all, congratulations on your new film ‘Charlie St. Cloud’! It’s a very moving story. What was running through your mind the first time that you read the script?
ZAC EFRON: Thank you. Thank you very much! The first time I read the script, it was kind of too good to be true because I happened to be spending the night on my Dad’s sailboat just to sort of change things up. When I opened the script, I didn’t know it was about sailing. It just had the name on it: ‘Charlie St. Cloud’. But when I flipped it open, the first thing was the sailboat race. And there I was, on the front-deck of a really nice sailboat. And as soon as I started to read into the race, I remember, the wind kind of picked up. And I was like: ‘Wow!’ It was kind of like <laughs> in ‘The NeverEnding Story’ or something. It was kind of weird! <laughs>

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