It’s Zac Efron’s first love who has painted the clearest picture of what her relationship with him was like. “Right off the bat, we had a connection. I think everybody could see it. When we had our audition, they paired us together. And he was adorable,” Vanessa Hudgens told Glamour in 2010. “I mean, he wasn’t the guy that he is today. Like, he had a gap in his teeth.”
Hudgens and Efron bonded over their extraordinary shared circumstances; it’s not everyone who catapults to fame as a teen and grows up in front of a camera. But fame also presents unique challenges for couples to overcome. In an interview with The New York Times, Hudgens confessed that she struggled with her boyfriend being a huge heartthrob with loads of obsessed fans. “I went through a phase when I was really mean because I was so fed up,” she revealed. “Girls were running after him, and I was giving them death stares.”
Read Related Also: Wounded SA police officer could be released from hospital within days
While Hudgens was able to get over her jealousy, she and Efron broke up six months after she shared Zanessa’s origin story with Glamour. She later told Shape that their time apart was a factor in their split; sadly, they couldn’t stay together in Disney’s musical version of high school forever. “When you don’t have face-to-face time, it’s just different. Having an iPhone helped, but it just wasn’t the same,” she said. However, Efron’s next rumored romance was with another busy young celeb.
