Zac Efron Discusses How His Background In Dance Helped Him Wrestle In ‘The Iron Claw’

Zac Efron talks The Iron Claw.

The acclaimed actor, who plays wrestling legend Kevin Von Erich in the film, spoke about the project during a recent interview with W Magazine. One topic that gets brought up is Efron’s background in dance from his High School Musical days. He tells the publication that said dance experience was very helpful for him when he actually had to wrestle.

Dancing and wrestling are surprisingly similar. There’s a choreographed element to both, and the more you do it, the better you get. Also, just the sense of moving with a partner: Sometimes you lead, and sometimes you’re holding on to the other guy. The learning curve for wrestling is you just go for it. For stuff like climbing up on the ropes and jumping off, you’ve just got to nut up and go for it. There’s no real practicing.

Efron later joked that people have been singing High School Musical at him for years, and the cast of The Iron Claw was no exception.

People like to do that to mess with me. It’s pretty funny. We had a scene where we show up to a party where Stanley, I think, is singing a song. He performed it live, and then they just continued to move on to another song, and it was something from High School Musical. I had to stay in character while that was going on, and everybody else was just losing it. The camera was on me, and I was just trying to stay in character. It put me in Kevin’s shoes a little bit. I felt very uncomfortable.

The Iron Claw is in theaters now.