Tyson Beckford Make Me a Supermodel

Tyson Craig Beckford (born December 19, 1970 in Bronx, New York) is a Jamaican American male supermodel and actor, best known as a Ralph Lauren model. With “Make Me a Supermodel,” Bravo is looking to repeat the success of its other supermodel-hosted reality series, “Project Runway.” Does one-time catwalk star Beckford have the chops to outperform “Runway” host Heidi Klum? If anyone can make it work, it’s Tyson.

Both of Beckford’s parents are Jamaican. His paternal grandmother is ethnically Chinese. Growing up in Rochester, New York, he attended Bay Trail Middle School in the suburbs of Penfield, NY and then Pittsford Mendon High School in the affluent suburb of Pittsford as a participant in the Urban-Suburban Program, a busing program designed to give educational opportunities to urban youth in the city’s surrounding suburban school districts.

Tyson was a member of his high school football and track teams. In 1991, he was recruited to hip hop magazine The Source by a talent scout who had come across him by chance in a New York park. In 1993, Beckford was recruited by Ralph Lauren as the front model for the company’s Polo line of male sportswear. Beckford was named “Man of the Year” in 1995 by the cable television music channel VH1, as well as one of the “50 Most Beautiful People in the World” by People magazine.

Born on Dec. 19, 1970 in The Bronx, NY, model and reality personality Tyson Beckford rose to prominence as a preeminent face for high-end clothier Ralph Lauren and went on to become the first African-American male supermodel. Beckford moved with his family to Jamaica early in life and lived there until he was seven.

Back in upstate New York, he attended top-ranked Pittsford Mendon High School in an affluent suburb of Pittsford, thanks to his participation in a busing program that brought youths from urban areas to suburban schools. In the summer of 1993, he was discovered at random in Washington Square Park in Manhattan by an editor for The Source, a hip-hop magazine that gave Beckford his first modeling gig. Convinced he had found his career path, Beckford landed an agent and began modeling for Ralph Lauren, leading him to appear in print ads, on television and at various fashion events around the world. In 1995, he was named “Man of the Year” by VH1 and one of the “50 Most Beautiful People in the World” by People magazine.

Beckford expanded his modeling horizons, appearing in GQ, Vogue and Essence before making the shift to a film and television career. He made his feature debut with a cameo as himself in the Ben Stiller comedy “Zoolander” (2001), before scoring a more substantial supporting role in the low-budget thriller “Pandora’s Box” (2002). On the television side, he served as a correspondent on the syndicated magazine show “Source All Access TV” (2000-01), then landed guest spots on “Half & Half” (UPN, 2002-06) and “My Wife and Kids” (ABC, 2000-05).

After making an early exit from “I’m a Celebrity – Get Me Out of Here!” (ABC, 2002-03), a short-lived reality competition pitting a group of celebs against each other in an Australian rain forest, Beckford returned to film with noticeable roles in “Biker Boyz” (2003) and “Into the Blue” (2005). In June 2005, Beckford crashed his Dodge Ram into a utility pole in New Jersey, causing the vehicle to be consumed in flames.

He was treated for head trauma and cuts, then appeared on “Oprah” to discuss his near-fatal experience. Meanwhile, Beckford shared hosting duties with fashion model Niki Taylor on “Make Me a Supermodel” (Bravo, 2007- ), a reality competition with seven men and seven women living together in a Manhattan loft while trying to win a $100,000 modeling agency contract.

In June 2005, Beckford was injured in a car accident near his home. His vehicle caught fire, and Beckford was able to pull himself out before it became fully engulfed in flames. The accident had a profound effect on his spirituality, which he later revealed on The Oprah Winfrey Show.

Beckford has been a resident of The New Jersey communities of Edgewater and West New York. He is currently co-hosting the reality series “Make Me a Supermodel” on the television channel Bravo with fellow supermodel Niki Taylor.

Hulk Hogan the American Gladiators

The legendary wrestler is back on the small screen with NBC’s “American Gladiators.” Thanks to excitement over the smackdown series — and interest in his recently announced divorce proceedings — the mustachioed muscle man tops the list of most-searched on celebs in winter’s TV shows. He can thank a fan base that’s looking primarily middle-aged: Searchers between the ages of 30 and 44 have bulked up.

Undoubtedly the most recognized personality to emerge from World Wrestling Entertainment (formerly known as the World Wrestling Federation), Hulk Hogan maintained enormous popularity as a professional wrestler throughout a long career that saw its share of dizzying highs and humiliating lows. Though wrestling had always been defined by absolutes — the morality tale of good versus evil – the story behind the scenes was far more complex, as personal tragedies entangled in an intricate web of a billion-dollar business.

For Hogan, however, brushes with scandal did little to unhinge a successful career that saw his face on lunch pails, bed sheets and movie posters the world over. With his induction into the WWE Hall of Fame in 2005, he cemented his place in wrestling’s elite and the cultural pantheon.

Born Terry Bollea in Tampa, FL, to a construction worker dad and homemaker mom, Hogan was always athletic, wrestling and playing Little League in his youth. His fast-growing frame required more food than normal – a typical breakfast consisted of 10 eggs, 12-ounces of hamburger and a quart of orange juice. By the time he graduated Robinson High School, Hogan was 6’7” and weighed over 300 pounds. While in high school, he began playing bass in local bands, earning $300-400 per week at clubs and parties.

He later attended Hillsborough Community College, then the University of South Florida, where he studied music and finance. But Hogan wanted to play music rather than study, so he quit college to focus on his band. Music, however, soon gave way to the humdrum life of bank telling, where Hogan routinely witnessed bruised and burly men with few teeth cashing rather large checks. When he later discovered they were wrestlers, Hogan contacted a local promoter, who challenged the upstart to an audition. Though he broke his ankle, he returned three months later, humbled and ready to learn. He even began working out to trim his bulky frame to a lean 220.

Hogan began his career under the persona Terry Boulder and earned $125 a week while sleeping in his car. He moved around – Minnesota, Florida, Tennessee and Georgia – wrestling under different guises, like the masked Super Destroyer or Sterling Gordon, before eventually settling on Hulk Hogan. Meanwhile, wrestling impresario Vince McMahon saw him on television and invited Hogan to wrestle at Madison Square Garden.

After 18 months with the growing WWF, he was given a note backstage from Sylvester Stallone asking him to appear in “Rocky III” (1982). Thinking it a hoax, Hogan ignored the request and went to wrestle in Japan for eight weeks. Upon his return, however, he received another message from Stallone: Come to LA, now. Despite warnings from McMahon, who had Hogan booked for a match in North Carolina, the young wrestler left for the West Coast.

After appearing in “Rocky III” as Thunderlips, a pro wrestler who challenges the boxing champ in a free-for-all match, Hogan became an overnight celebrity and helped the regional WWF become a national phenomenon. Hogan’s intense following was dubbed “Hulkamania,” with his red and yellow bandanas, handlebar mustache and 24-inch pythons soon becoming widely recognized trademarks – even outside the wrestling world. To add to the brouhaha, on Jan. 24, 1984, Hogan defeated his arch nemesis, the Iron Sheik, at the Garden, earning Hogan his first world title. The following year saw the birth of the yearly Pay-Per-View event, “Wrestlemania,” in which Hogan joined “Rocky III” co-star Mr. T in a tag-team bout against “Rowdy” Roddy Piper and “Mr. Wonderful” Paul Orndorff. But it was in “Wrestlemania III” (1987) that Hogan cemented his fame when he paired off against Andre the Giant, lifting the 500-pound wrestler for a winning body slam – perhaps the most talked about match in “Wrestlemania” history.

Throughout the 1980s and early 1990s, Hogan won and lost heavyweight championships, and was on the card for nine consecutive Wrestlemanias. Meanwhile, he ventured into acting with “No Holds Barred” (1989), playing an up-and-coming wrestling star forced into a match after his brother is injured by his nemesis. Not much of a stretch for the novice actor. Predictably, the movie bombed at the box office. After a cameo in “Gremlins 2: The New Batch” (1990), Hogan starred as an intergalactic hero stranded on Earth in the sci-fi comedy, “Suburban Commando” (1991). He then tried his hand at domestic comedy with “Mr. Nanny” (1993), playing a down-and-out wrestler who becomes a family’s bodyguard for extra cash. Though he did all he could for laughs – even donning a pink tutu and singing “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star” – the movie bombed.

In the early 1990s, Hogan became entangled in a drug scandal that rocked professional wrestling to its core. He was first accused by former wrestlers – including “Superstar” Billy Graham – of abusing steroids throughout the 1970s and 80s, while Barry Orton claimed that Hogan did cocaine. To mitigate the damage, Hogan went on “The Arsenio Hall Show” (Syndicated, 1989-1994) and explained away the accusations, claiming that he was prescribed steroids to treat an injury and had used them only a few times.

But in 1994, he proffered testimony to the contrary after being granted immunity in Vince McMahon’s trial for illegally providing steroids to his wrestlers. Hogan admitted what others had previously claimed; that he had used the illegal substance for almost two decades. Meanwhile, he left the WWF for Ted Turner’s World Championship Wrestling, where he adopted the bad-guy persona, Hollywood Hogan.

Hogan stayed with the WCW for the next 10 years while he continued acting, albeit in much lower-profile features. Most titles – “Thunder in Paradise” (1993), “The Secret Agent Club” (1996), “Santa with Muscles” (1996) and “McCinsey’s Island” (1997), all riffs on his tough guy image – went straight to video. He then joined former “Rocky III” costar Carl Weathers for “Assault on Devil’s Island” (TNT, 1997), playing a retired Navy Seal who leads a special commando team to rescue a gymnastics team kidnapped by a South American drug cartel. He returned for the sequel, “Shadow Warriors 2” (TNT, 1999), in which his character, Mike McBride, is injected with a deadly serum by Middle Eastern terrorists. Meanwhile, Hogan dipped his toe into episodic television, appearing on “Suddenly Susan” (NBC, 1996-2000) and “Walker, Texas Ranger” (CBS, 1993-2001).

In 2002, Hogan made a triumphant return to the WWE when he faced another wrestling star-turned-actor, Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson, in a special Pay-Per-View event. But despite his return – along with many other former favorites of the WWE – wrestling was rapidly losing television viewers and live audiences due to accusations of fakery, over-saturation and weak storylines.

Hogan left wrestling in 2003 – supposedly for good – before he was inducted in the WWE Hall of Fame in 2005. But an impassioned chant from fans during the ceremony at the Universal Amphitheater for “one more match” induced Hogan to return once again.

In the Pay-Per-View show, “Backlash,” he participated in a tag team match with Shawn Michaels and notched another win on his belt. Meanwhile, Hogan joined the reality show craze, allowing cameras to intrude upon him and his family for “Hogan Knows Best” (2005- ), VH-1’s answer to “The Osbournes” (MTV, 2002-2005). Viewers found the famous wrestler’s overprotective ways with his beautiful daughter Brooke Hogan particularly, amusing – especially when male beaus came calling.

Tom Cruise’s banned biography !

Read what’s in the Tom Cruise biography that’s already been banned in the UK.

How dubious is Andrew Morton’s long-awaited Tom Cruise: An Unauthorized Biography? Well, the book is not for sale in the United Kingdom, due to that country’s libel laws; and it’s rumored that Scientology lawyers are already drawing up a suit against Morton’s publisher, St. Martin’s Press. If you’re craving the inside (and blatantly unsubstantiated) scoop on Tom’s private life, follow Slate’s handy guide straight to the good parts.

Inside the Actor’s Closet:

Ever since that ridiculously homoerotic volleyball scene in Top Gun, the world has wondered about Tom Cruise’s sexuality. But Andrew Morton’s Tom is a hot-blooded heterosexual.

Page 13: One of Tom’s first girlfriends, Carol Trumpler, still gets “misty-eyed” when she remembers her brief dalliance with the future star: “He was a very good kisser, very much at ease with it all. But what do you know at eleven?” Sadly for Carol, Tom moved on pretty quick. “I was trying to be a good girl, and when I didn’t give in to his ways he moved on.”

Page 68: Remember the sex-on-a-train scene in Risky Business? Morton alleges that “while Tom and Rebecca [De Mornay] were nervous before playing the scene, those who snuck onto the closed set are convinced that the answer to the question of ‘did they, didn’t they’ really get it on on camera is a firm yes.”

Page 195: High-school girlfriend Diane Van Zoeren doesn’t give any credence to the “Tom is gay” rumor: “I don’t get it. I find these stories just hard to believe. We romanced in my dad’s Oldsmobile doing what you are not supposed to.”

Page 34: Nancy Armel, another high-school flame, also remembers fooling around in a parked car. She told Morton: “I was black and blue from the gearshift.”

Page 65: Tom tried to impress Nancy by taking her to the Broadway musical La Cage aux Folles, but he “was unaware of the story line—about two gay men living together in St. Tropez.” According to Nancy, “he couldn’t handle it. We had to leave before the intermission. It really bothered him. He was definitely homophobic.”

Page 195: Morton claims that “Tom was uncomfortable around gay men. Those who saw him in the company of some of Nicole [Kidman's] gay friends, who included designer John Galliano, noticed that he was awkward and ill at ease, much preferring the company of jocks who talked about football rather than fashion.”

Courtly Knight/Night Stalker

Page 259: Just one day after Sofía Vergara met Tom, Morton says the Colombian actress “faced a blizzard of phone calls, text messages, and e-mails.” Tom also “sent her flowers, notes, and chocolates.”

Page 263: Eventually, Sofía got freaked out by Tom’s attentiveness and his faith. When Tom arranged for a trip to Clearwater, the Scientology center in Florida, she allegedly “stood him up, packing a bag and ‘disappearing’ for a few days.” Tom, however, wouldn’t let up: “For five days he left messages and texts, but she resolutely refused to return his calls.”

Page 145: During their courtship phase, Tom sent Nicole Kidman “flowers, usually red roses, almost daily.”

Page 157: Tom’s romancing didn’t stop with clichéd flora; he also had a way with words. Morton claims that “one householder in Toronto who rented her house to the Cruises was bemused to find several love notes in her sofa cushions when she moved back in. At first she thought her husband was being uncharacteristically affectionate. Then she realized they were penned by Tom.”

Page 166: Tom was always asking, “Where is Nic?” An unnamed insider confirms that he was “a control freak, certainly. … He was always checking up on Nic especially.”

Free Katie Holmes!

Page 278: Allegedly, Katie signed a Scientology contract that fundamentally changed her “human rights and those of her future children, requiring that if she or any of her children were ever to suffer from mental or terminal illness, they must turn only to Scientology’s treatments. She must never use psychiatric care or psychiatric drugs.”

Page 290-291: Morton repeats the sketchy tabloid rumors that Tom “bought a fetus learning system that was strapped to Katie’s stomach” and that he “fitted Katie’s cell phone with a tracking device so that he would know where she was day and night.”

Page 289: Without naming his sources, Morton spins the following yarn: “Some [Scientology] sect members sincerely believed that Katie Holmes was carrying the baby who would be the vessel for L. Ron Hubbard’s spirit when he returned from his trip around the galaxy. True believers were convinced that Tom’s spawn would be the reincarnation of L. Ron Hubbard. Some Sea Org fanatics even wondered if the actress had been impregnated with Hubbard’s frozen sperm.” How’d Katie feel about all this? Morton puts his intuitive powers to the test to produce this gem: “Katie might have felt as if she were in the middle of a real-life version of the horror movie Rosemary’s Baby, in which an unsuspecting young woman is impregnated with the Devil’s child.”

Operating Thetan:

Page 109: Scriptwriter and onetime Scientologist Skip Press conjectures that Tom’s first wife, Mimi Rogers, “made a play for Tom with the primary intention of bringing him into the [Scientology] cult and leapfrogging over him to an acting career.”

Page 123: When Tom accepted an invitation to the Scientology Gold Base in the California desert, head honcho David Miscavige allegedly announced to his staff: “The most important recruit ever is in the process of being secured. His arrival will change the face of Scientology forever.”

Page 153-154: Tom and Nicole shared a “fantasy of running through a meadow of wildflowers together.” Eager to please his recruit, Miscavige “decided to make his dream come true. A team of twenty Sea Org disciples was set to work digging, hoeing, and planting wheat grass and wildflower seed near the Cruises’ bungalow. Former Scientologist Maureen Bolstad recalled working until early in the morning in the mud and pouring rain.” Sounds implausible, but Morton quotes another former Scientologist, Karen Pressley, as saying: “the story of the meadow for Tom and Nicole is absolutely true. I was there.”

Page 171-172: By 1993, Morton says Tom “progressed to what Scientologists call ‘the Wall of Fire,’ or Operating Thetan III, where the secrets of the universe according to Hubbard [are] revealed.” Allegedly, “Tom found the knowledge he had just received disturbing and alarming, as he struggled to reconcile the creationist myth with the more practical teachings contained in the lower levels of Scientology. … It was recalled that around this time relations became ‘ugly’ between David Miscavige and the Hollywood actor, Tom complaining that he had studied all these years and the whole faith was about space aliens.”

Page 250: Tom’s disenchantment didn’t last long. Morton writes that by 2004, Tom “reached the exalted level of Operating Thetan VII, where Hubbard promised that man would become his own god.” What’s level VII like? According to former Scientologist Peter Alexander, “You believe that all your problems are due to these thetans. So when you come back into reality, you’re like, ‘Wow, this is a nice day, my dog’s been killed but that doesn’t matter, I realize that I am a being who has lived endlessly contacting all those long-lost body thetans. So nothing is really a problem.’” ~ By Juliet Lapidos

Links:

• Tom Cruise Website:  http://www.westlord.com/tomcruise/
• Nicole Kidman Website: http://www.westlord.com/nicolekidman/
• Katie Holmes Website: http://www.westlord.com/katieholmes/

Wentworth Miller for most searched on actors !

Every once and a while, an actor appears in a role that seems tailor-made. For Wentworth Miller, that role came when he was cast as young Coleman Silk in “The Human Stain” (2003), a race drama about a man (the older version played by Sir Anthony Hopkins) hiding the true nature of his identity—one born from a white mother and black father. Miller’s own background was a mirror image of the character, which naturally gave him an edge on the competition despite his sparse resume.

Prior to his feature debut, Miller paid his dues in small unforgiving roles on various television shows. Eventually, Miller began appearing in more prominent parts, including the lead role on the escape drama, “Prison Break” (Fox, 2005- ), an action-packed series that had set him up to become a breakthrough star.

Though Miller was born in Chipping Norton, England, where his father was a Rhodes Scholar, he grew up in Park Slope, Brooklyn, back when it was far less trendy. The cultural diversity of his neighborhood allowed him to ignore issues of race—with so many around and within him, Miller never really thought much about it.

His family later moved to Sewickley, Pennsylvania where he attended Quaker Valley High School his senior year. After graduation, he attended Princeton and majored in English. Though he loved acting and appeared in school productions since he was in kindergarten, Miller blenched at the prospect of pursuing acting in the business-oriented climate of the Ivy League school. Upon graduation in 1995, Miller moved to Los Angeles and began his entertainment career as a lowly assistant at a development company, presumably to put his Princeton degree to good use.

Working at the development company rekindled his desire to act, however, and later, while working behind the counter at a Border’s Bookstore, he began going on auditions. Three years after landing in Los Angeles., he got his first role on an episode of “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” (WB-UPN, 1996-2003), then went on to a recurring role on the short-lived Fox series, “The Time of Your Life” (1999-2000), a spin-off from “Party of Five” (Fox, 1994-2000) starring Jennifer Love Hewitt. In a 2000 episode of “ER” (NBC, 1994- ), he played a high school quarterback injured in a student riot.

After another recurring role on the teen comedy “Popular” (WB, 1999-2001) was cut short, Miller appeared as a waiter in “Room 302” (2001), a short film featured in Showtime’s 9th annual Black Filmmaker Showcase. An appearance in the cliché-ridden miniseries, “Dinotopia” (ABC, 2002), a CGI fantasy about a lost continent where humans and dinosaurs co-exist peacefully, added a major—albeit cheesy—role to his resume.

In 2003, Miller was set to make a major breakthrough after being cast as a younger version of Anthony Hopkins in “The Human Stain.” Miller had an intense personal connection to the racially ambiguous character—as a person of mixed racial make-up, he ran into trouble for making derogatory, though misconstrued, remarks about African-Americans, much like the character in the movie.

While a junior at Princeton, he published a cartoon in the Daily Princetonian featuring Cornel West, then professor of African-American studies who was hired away by Harvard, as teaching white students a class called ‘Rhythm – Why None of You Have It, and How You Can Get It.” The cartoon also referred to West as “newly-purchased,” an innocent academic term for newly hired that was taken as a reference to slavery. The New York Times ran a story, novelist Toni Morrison wrote an angry letter and Miller—despite his racial background—was considered a campus racist. And like Coleman Silk, Miller refrained from revealing his true nature.

After filming the movie, Miller wrote a letter to West apologizing for the cartoon, but it went unanswered. West was, however, a friend of actress Anna Deveare Smith, who played Silk’s mother, and showed up at the premiere. He unexpectedly gave Miller a bear hug and all was well.

The film, on the other hand, did not fair so well—it made a paltry $5 million at the box office despite the star power of Hopkins and Nicole Kidman.

Meanwhile, Miller had a small supporting role in, “Underworld” (2003), a sci-fi thriller about a secret war between vampires and werevolves.

But the weak showing of “The Human Stain” forced Miller to take a step back to reevaluate his life and career, leaving him without an appearance in 2004. He did make a strong comeback in 2005, starting with the music video for Mariah Carey’s “We Belong Together,” in which he steals the singer away from Eric Roberts at the alter. Not exactly a shining moment, but it got him back into circulation—repeatedly on VH1, at least.

After a couple of episodes on “Joan of Arcadia” (CBS, 2003-2005), he gave his best HAL impression in the big budget bomb, “Stealth” (2005), voicing EDI, the onboard computer of a runaway aerial combat plane equipped with nuclear weapons and artificial intelligence gone haywire.

Miller then landed the role of Michael Scofield on the Fox series, “Prison Break,” playing a structural engineer who robs a bank in order to get arrested and placed in the same prison as his brother (Dominic Purcell), a wrongly-accused death row inmate. Despite criticism for stretching the boundaries of plausibility, the show was hailed for its suspense and excitement. The show made an impressive debut, pulling 10.5 million viewers its first night and holding 8.5 million its second episode. Meanwhile, he appeared in the pilot episode of “The Ghost Whisperer” (CBS, 2005), which was set to air late September.

Zac Efron new Photos and Biography

Zachary David Alexander Efron (born October 18, 1987) is an American actor and singer. He began acting in the early 2000s, and became known to young audiences after his roles in the Disney Channel Original Movie High School Musical, the WB series Summerland, and the film version of the Broadway musical Hairspray. Speaking to Newsweek in June 2006, director Adam Shankman described Efron as “arguably the biggest teen star in America right now.”  In 2007, right before the release of High School Musical 2, Rolling Stone declared him the “poster boy for tweenyboppers” and featured him in their late August issue

It took just one TV movie to change young actor Zac Efron from a supporting player to a bonafide teen star. Of course, that TV movie was The Disney Channel’s tween pop cultural phenomenon, “High School Musical” (2005), which elevated Efron to major league heartthrob status for his eminently crushable turn as a high school jock who discovers his hidden love for singing. Prior to “High School Musical,” the Arroyo Grande, CA native had appeared in a string of supporting and minor roles on television, most notably in the WB teen drama “Summerland” (2004-05), which starred another reigning tween favorite, Jesse McCartney.

Born Oct. 18, 1987 in San Luis Obispo, CA, Efron made his TV debut only a few years before “Summerland” and “High School Musical.” He’d developed an interest in acting after his parents encouraged him to exercise his innate singing talent through lessons and later local theater. After culling an impressive list of stage roles – including a long-running production of “Gypsy” – Efron took the next logical step and began pursuing screen acting jobs. Guest shots on “Firefly” (Fox, 2002-04) and “ER” (NBC, 1994- ), as well as the highly scripted “reality series” “Room Raiders” (MTV, 2004- ) preceded his first substantial turn as the autistic son of Mary-Louise Parker and Aidan Quinn in the 2003 Lifetime TV-movie, “Miracle Run.” The performance earned Efron a Young Artist Award nomination for Best Supporting Actor.

More television followed, including several failed pilots, before Efron landed the role of Cameron Bale on “Summerland.” Initially intended as a guest spot, Efron’s casual charm and good looks endeared him to audiences, and he joined the show’s cast as a regular until its cancellation in 2005. That same year, Efron turned up as a featured player in teen pop singer Hope Partlow’s video for “Sick Inside,” before landing the lead role in a Disney Channel production that harkened back to such classic teen musicals as “Bye Bye Birdie” and “Grease.”

That film, helmed and choreographed by Kenny (“Dirty Dancing,” 1987) Ortega, turned out to be “High School Musical,” which earned spectacular ratings for the Mickey Mouse network and yielded a triple platinum-selling soundtrack album and a sales record-breaking DVD. The soundtrack also made Efron the first artist ever to debut on the Billboard Hot 100 charts with two singles in the same week. He would eventually have five singles from the soundtrack on the charts, though some of the glamour was blunted when it was revealed that Efron’s vocals had been “sweetened” by combining them with that of actor/singer Andrew Seeley.

The minor controversy did little to dampen the groundswell of popularity building behind Efron, which spread like wildfire when his appearances on the popular Disney Channel TV series “The Suite Life of Zach and Cody” (2005- ) and “NCIS: Naval Criminal Investigative Service” (CBS, 2003- ) aired while “HSM” was screening almost around the clock for Disney. A frantic April 2006 appearance with his “HSM” co-star Ashley Tisdale on MTV’s “TRL” (1998- ) confirmed his runaway popularity with the tween and teen audiences, and since then, Efron’s image has been inescapable on and between the covers of magazines that cater to that demographic.

While riding the “HSM” wave, Efron attempted to parlay his popularity into a Fox TV series entitled “If You Lived Here, You’d Be Home By Now” (2006), which was inspired by the Oakwood apartment complex in Los Angeles which serves as a temporary home for countless aspiring teen actors. The pilot was unfortunately not picked up for the 2006-07 season. But fans did not have to wait long for his next project.

In 2006, it was announced that Efron would be joining the cast of the highly anticipated film version of the popular Broadway musical “Hairspray” (2007). Much of the press was quick to point out that Efron, who was playing the show’s heartthrob, Link Larkin, would be doing all of his own singing (in an pre-emptive strike against any lingering doubts of his abilities). Interestingly enough, Efron seemingly balked on releasing a pop album, unlike his “HSM” co-stars Vanessa Anne Hudgens, Ashley Tisdale, and Corbin Bleu, all of whom inked contracts with major labels for their own CDs.

On April 7, 2007, Efron appeared in an episode of Punk’d. Efron also starred in the music video for Vanessa Hudgens’s single “Say OK”, where he played her love interest. The video aired on March 16, 2007 on Disney Channel. That year, he was named one of People magazine’s 100 Most Beautiful People in 2007. A picture and short profile of him was in the section “Coming of Age”. In it, he related how he was always the shortest kid in school (he is now 5′8″) and was teased for the “huge gap” in his teeth.

In 2006, Efron was cast as Link Larkin in a film version of Hairspray released on July 20, 2007. Efron performed all of his own vocals in the role, which was filmed in Toronto, Ontario, from September 5 to December 2, 2006. He cut and dyed his hair dark brown and gained about 15 pounds for the role. Both Efron’s performance and the film have received positive reviews. Efron presented the 2007 Teen Choice Award for “Favorite Movie” alongside Queen Latifah.

Efron’s upcoming roles include Seventeen, a high school-set drama/comedy produced by Adam Shankman and based on a pitch by Jason Filardi; the plot involves an adult who is transformed into a 17-year old (to be played by Efron). Efron is also scheduled to star in Paramount’s musical remake of the film Footloose; he has said that he would like to add his “own little bit of flair” to the role originated by Kevin Bacon.

For his portrayal of Link Larkin in Hairspray, Efron (along with his co-star Nikki Blonsky) won the “One to Watch” award of the Young Hollywood Awards. Efron appeared on the cover of the August 2007 edition of Rolling Stone. The article about him revealed that he hopes to someday play an action hero.

Efron has finalized negotiations with the producers of Seventeen, a film slated to commence shooting in December 2007.

Before the release of High School Musical 2, Efron topped IMDBPro’s Star Meter at #1, indicating that he was the most searched celebrity. Additionally, Lycos reported searches for Efron surged by 81%. Amid the frenzy surrounding Zac Efron, the release of High School Musical 2 set a new record, becoming the most watched basic cable program in U.S. history, with 17.2 million viewers.

Efron co-hosted the 2007 Nickelodeon Australian Kids’ Choice Awards with The Veronicas on October 10 in Sydney.

Efron is represented by the Creative Artists Agency. Efron has two dogs, Australian shepherds named Dreamer and Puppy, along with a Siamese cat named Simon. Zac is currently involved in a relationship with his High School Musical, High School Musical 2 and High School Musical 3 co-star Vanessa Anne Hudgens.