London: Zac Efron has spoken out about how he feels about the gay rumours that have followed him around ever since his ‘High School Musical’ days.
“I don’t like to live in fear about things like rumors and backlash to begin with — that’s the way I was raised — but I just can’t see what’s so wrong about being gay,” the Mirror quoted him as saying in an interview with US online magazine Advocate.
“It’s an issue that affects so many people in my life — a lot of my close friends and some of the most influential people around me. I just want them all to be happy. It would make me so happy to see them able to live their lives and do what they want to do.
“I might’ve been less aware of it back then, but without question I had gay role models [when I was growing up],” he said.
Last year, a photo of the 24-year-old went viral when people spotted he was wearing a t-shirt saying “Some Dudes Marry Dudes. Get over It”, and while the picture was later revealed to be photo shopped, Efron revealed that he wouldn’t have had a problem with wearing the shirt in the first place.
“Yeah, that picture was fake, but a couple days after it went around, a fan sent me a shirt identical to the one in the picture. So now I do own that shirt,” he said.
“I’m sure I have (worn it in the past)] and I’m sure I will. It’s still hanging up somewhere,” he said.
The actor even shed some light on why his role in ‘High School Musical’ got so much LGBT support.
“I think the gay audience related to my character Troy, because it really was a story of embracing who you are, no matter how different you might be, and not being afraid to show it. That’s a universal theme for everyone, but it specifically resonated with the gay community, and I felt very proud of that,” he added.
ANI
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