Hairspray’s Hebrew Hotties
Heartthrob Zac Efron might be linked to such thin-limbed starlets as Vanessa Anne Hudgens and fellow member-of-the-tribe Ashley Tisdale, both of the Disney Channel’s “High School Musical,” but perfectly toned abs aren’t everything for the star of the new film “Hairspray,” which opens today.
“It’s really great in the movie, because in real life I’ve always tended to be that guy that goes for the Tracys,” Efron said during a roundtable interview July 17 in Manhattan. “And I’m very proud to play that [guy who] shows it’s really not about being that tall, perfect Amber girl, that blond girl that’s so stereotypical in high school. It’s about character, and about having fun. It’s about hobbies and your person.”
Efron told The Shmooze that he’s an agnostic and that the red string he was wearing “is just a bracelet that a friend made for me that hasn’t fallen off yet. No, it’s not Kabbalah,” he explained.
Stunning Amanda Bynes, a Nickelodeon breakout star, shared that director Adam Shankman had the actors watch dance shows from the 1960s, “because there’s a different move; the way that the ’60s dance goes is more to the side.”
As for the 21-year-old’s favorite film costume: “I like the tight pants on the boys. It was nice to actually see a form of legs as opposed to the normal, like, baggy, butt out.”
Bynes told us: “I’m not that religious. I believe in treating people how you want to be treated.”
A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you move on, I wanted to ask you to support the Forward’s award-winning journalism during our High Holiday Monthly Donor Drive.
If you’ve turned to the Forward in the past 12 months to better understand the world around you, we hope you will support us with a gift now. Your support has a direct impact, giving us the resources we need to report from Israel and around the U.S., across college campuses, and wherever there is news of importance to American Jews.
Make a monthly or one-time gift and support Jewish journalism throughout 5785. The first six months of your monthly gift will be matched for twice the investment in independent Jewish journalism.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO
