In the post-rehab interview, the 'Neighbors' actor admits he 'made a lot of mistakes' and 'learned from each one.'
- May 1, 2014
AceShowbiz - Zac Efron breaks silence on his struggle with addiction since he quietly entered rehab last year. "I was drinking a lot, way too much," the former Disney star opens up in a new interview with The Hollywood Reporter, noting that there were drugs too.
"It's never one specific thing. I mean, you're in your 20s, single, going through life in Hollywood, you know? Everything is thrown at you. I wouldn't take anything back; I needed to learn everything I did. But it was an interesting journey, to say the least," he says.
"When you have success young, and you accept the good things, you have to accept all of it. You have to accept the moments of glory but also a great responsibility. And that responsibility, to some degree, involves being a role model. At the same time, I'm a human being, and I've made a lot of mistakes. I've learned from each one."
"No matter who you are, you face challenges growing up," he says. "You go with your things, you learn, you have to. It's impossible to lead an honest and fulfilling life as a man and not make mistakes and 'fess up to them when you need to. But it's especially humiliating when they happen to be so public and so scrutinized."
Efron also explains the recent headline-grabbing incident during which he got into scuffle with a homeless man. "I had a friend come pick me up late at night -- we were looking for a place downtown to get a bite and catch up," he remembers. "We were having trouble finding somewhere -- a lot of places were closed -- and the car ran out of gas off the 110. It was ridiculous. We had to pull over, and I called Uber."
While waiting, "A homeless guy, or vagrant, tapped on the driver's-side window. Before I knew it, he [the friend] was out of the car, and they started fighting. I saw that [the homeless man] was carrying some sort of a knife, or shank, and I got out of the car to disarm him. At some point, he dropped the knife, and I got hit pretty hard in the face -- and almost instantly the police were there to break up the fight."
