When Michael Jackson made Zac Efron cry over a phone call

Actor Zac Efron may be one of the biggest heart-throbs in Hollywood right now, but even he gets star-struck. While appearing in a recent episode of The Graham Norton Show, the Baywatch star remembered a time he and late-pop star Michael Jackson cried over the phone while talking to each other.

The 30-year-old actor shared that while he never met the King of Pop face-to-face, he spoke to him briefly on the phone about a decade ago, when Jackson called movie director Kenny Ortega.

Efron said he was having dinner with the High School Musical director in Paris, when Ortega’s phone started ringing. Zac noted, “I was in Paris with Kenny Ortega and we were promoting High School Musical so I was 20 or 21 at the time. Kenny’s phone rang at dinner and he goes ‘it’s Michael Jackson’ and he handed me the phone. Michael said ‘Who’s this?’ and I said ‘It’s Zac Efron, I’m an actor and I’m a huge fan of yours’. And he goes, ‘That’s nice, can you hand the phone back to Kenny?’ Then the phone rang again and Kenny answered and gave it to me saying it was Michael again.”

Efron said he was “freaking out” and it took him a while to gather himself, after the very short conversation. Before he knew it, Ortega was handing him the phone again, as Jackson called back a second time.

“So I was really confused but Michael said ‘Oh this is Zac from High School Musical?, I love you too, I’m a huge fan.’ And I lost it, I fell over into a wall, I started crying, I was a mess. I told him he was my hero and that made him cry, so we were both just crying down the phone to each other. And he ended the phone call by saying, ‘Hey Zac, isn’t it awesome? Dreams really do come true don’t they?’“

On the work front, Efron can be currently seen in The Greatest Showman alongside Hugh Jackman and Zendaya.