Zac Efron hasn’t spent a lot of time thinking about his life outside of work.
“I’m thinking about where I want to build a home base and cultivate my life,” Efron, 36, said in an interview with Variety published on Thursday, December 14. “It’s shocking — sometimes you wake up after doing three movies a year, and you’re like, I’ve neglected thinking about my own personal life for this long.”
While Efron knows he can always find his family in California, he isn’t sure about where he wants to put down roots for himself. The High School Musical alum admitted that “growing up” in the industry at a young age, affected how he prioritized his career aspirations over other elements in his life.
“The goal is always the next mission, the next movie, making sure everyone else is very happy. It can be very lonely at times,” he explained to the outlet. “But the process of taking your emotions head-on, sort of working with them, was a profound moment in my life. And it’s definitely taken me down a different road.”
The actor described himself as a “perfectionist” while on set of his various projects, including his latest role in The Iron Claw.
“That necessity to be perfect — it became an obsession,” Efron explained of the work he put into bulking up to portray wrestler Kevin Von Erich for the project. “It was a singular focus for months. And your life goes out the window during prep.”
As Efron gets older, he realizes “life is way too short” to worry about being the perfect version of himself. Instead, it is “important” for him to stay connected with his friends and loved ones. One person the former Disney star wishes he spent more time with was the late Matthew Perry, who died in October.
“It’s very important to reach out to friends and foster relationships where you can talk and share stories. I wish in the past couple of years that I had an opportunity to do that with Matthew,” Efron admitted. “I hold the time we shared together really dear. I’ve been thinking about him a lot, every day.”
Efron and Perry worked together on the 2009 film 17 Again. Efron played a younger version of Perry’s character. In November, Perry’s friend Athenna Crosby revealed to Entertainment Tonight that the Friends alum wanted Efron to play a younger version of him again in a possible biopic.
In a separate interview, Efron revealed that he would love to portray his friend one more time.
“To think he was thinking of me for that role, I mean I would be honored to do it, to be honest,” he confessed to ET, noting that Perry was “the best guy in the world.”