Zac Efron has named his wrestling drama “The Iron Claw” as his most uncomfortable screen role to date, surpassing even his 2019 turn as serial killer Ted Bundy.
The 36-year-old actor, who spoke in an interview published on his birthday, gained 15 pounds of muscle to portray real-life wrestler Kevin Von Erich in the A24 film. Efron found the physical demands grueling, particularly the delayed onset muscle soreness that left him feeling debilitated. “You just feel old,” he said.
What caught him off guard, however, was not the training or the ring work but the downtime between takes. Efron described standing around in his underwear with a crowd nearby while nothing was happening, an experience he had never encountered on any previous set. “I’ve never experienced that one before,” he said. He found himself awkwardly wondering what to do with his hands, though he noted that “you get used to that too.”
Efron shared the screen with Harris Dickinson, Jeremy Allen White, and Stanley Simons, who played his on-screen brothers David, Kerry, and Mike Von Erich. The Bear star White later joked that Efron’s transformation was “annoying” given the intensity of his commitment.
The film traces the Von Erich family, a WWE Hall of Fame wrestling dynasty dogged by tragedy and a so-called “curse” that claimed multiple sons. Holt McCallany appeared as patriarch Fritz Von Erich, a former world-champion wrestler who devised the “Iron Claw” hold and drove his children to extremes in his World Class Championship Wrestling territory, a forerunner to today’s WWE.
Efron’s dramatically altered physique first drew attention when leaked set photos from the October 2022 shoot circulated online, prompting comparisons to the Hulk and sparking widespread fan reaction. The preparation demanded Olympic lifting, bodybuilding, and wrestling training across multiple daily workouts.
Director Sean Durkin, a devoted wrestling fan, recreated famous matches in granular detail alongside trainer Chavo Guerrero Jr., knowing the sport’s passionate audience would reject anything less than authenticity. Durkin set no specific size targets for his cast and left each actor to determine his own physical preparation, saying he did not feel guilty about their exertions because he respected their dedication to the work.
Efron found that adrenaline masked the pain during actual wrestling sequences, with discomfort only hitting later that night once the rush subsided.
A rare break from discipline came in the film’s final week, when most of the wrestling had wrapped. Durkin loaded a truck with cheeseburgers, and Efron consumed three or four in a single take during a silent driving scene with his on-screen brothers.
Efron had previously undergone a starkly different physical and psychological transformation to play Ted Bundy in Netflix’s “Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil and Vile,” a role he now considers less uncomfortable than the Von Erich part.
The leaked set images that revealed Efron’s bulked-up frame generated intense online discussion, with some viewers finding the change “jarring and distracting” when the film finally premiered. Efron has since addressed the broader speculation about his appearance, including persistent plastic surgery rumors tied to a 2013 jaw injury.