Actress Vanessa Hudgens was one half of High School Musical’s golden couple (both on screen and off). And life after the Disney phenomenon (and Zac Efron) is still treating her extremely well. Here she tells Lina Das why her latest movie role was a ‘no-brainer’, reveals the joys of hanging out with Michael Caine and what she looks for in a boyfriend.
Vanessa Hudgens is sitting in a café in California’s Studio City gamely trying to force down a huge, green health shake. It looks terrifying – like someone’s liquidised a football pitch and stuck a straw in it – but she finally gets to the end, mutters something unconvincing about how good it tastes and admits, somewhat gallingly in light of the fact that she’s small and perfectly formed, that she’s still trying to lose weight. ‘But it’s not for me,’ she adds. ‘It’s just that I need to look emaciated for the next character I’m playing, and I’m just trying to do it the healthy way.’
We’re here to talk about Vanessa’s role in a very different film – the action-adventure movie Journey 2: The Mysterious Island – but the scary-looking health shake is pretty hard to ignore. She’s downing it in preparation for the role of a 17-year-old prostitute in the Nicolas Cage thriller The Frozen Ground, having just finished work on Gimme Shelter, playing a pregnant, homeless teen. Early last year she caused a stir in the action film Sucker Punch, playing a kick-ass escapee from a mental institution, and since she made her name in High School Musical as the sweet, studious girlfriend to Zac Efron’s handsome jock (both on- and off-screen), it’s safe to assume that Vanessa is going all out to prove that there are more than just saccharine strings to her bow. ‘But it isn’t about me wanting to do a 180-degree turn just to spite what I’d done before,’ she insists. ‘I like to play different characters and to push myself. Sure, people had a certain knowledge of me after High School Musical, but it just made me fight harder for the roles I wanted,’ she smiles. ‘It definitely made me hustle.’
Admittedly, Vanessa doesn’t look like your average hustler. On the day we meet, she’s the epitome of young Hollywood glam, wearing a sparkly top, J Brand brown cords and the latest YSL wedges. Long lashes frame her large, Bambi eyes and in the flesh, it’s easy to see why she frequently appears on magazines’ Most Beautiful Actress lists. But there’s definite steel beneath the sweetness. Having performed since she was three, she made her film debut aged 14 in the controversial drama Thirteen and has been working largely without interruption ever since. Forbes regularly features her on its High Earners Under 30 lists and, at 23, she’s already rumoured to be worth $18 million (around £12 million).
So having worked since she was a teenager, isn’t she a little tired? ‘I was always extremely passionate about acting,’ she says, ‘and when you love something that much, you want to do it all the time. But I’ve noticed a change in me over the years. When I was younger, I played the adult more because I was acting with adults and wanted to fit in. Now I’m embracing my inner child and having fun.’
Certainly, like many a child actor before her, Vanessa is a mix of maturity beyond her years (‘there’s always been an adult quality to the way I thought’) coupled with a childlike need to have fun, and to satisfy the latter she decided to star in Journey 2: The Mysterious Island – a family film with Dwayne ‘The Rock’ Johnson and Sir Michael Caine. ‘When they told me about the cast and about the fact that we’d be filming in Hawaii,’ says Vanessa, ‘it was basically a no-brainer.’ Michael Caine was ‘awesome’ and as well as being taken with his acting skills, ‘I was really impressed that he knew what was hip and trendy,’ adds Vanessa. ‘He was singing Katy Perry’s “Firework” one day and then telling me about an iPad feature I had to get the next. The whole thing was just a great experience – I’d wake up to the sound of the ocean, play on the beach a little and then mosey on down to work. Who wouldn’t say yes to that?’
Journey 2 is a sequel to the 2008 film Journey to the Center of the Earth – a modern-day follow-on from the Jules Verne novel – which featured Brendan Fraser and The Kids Are All Right star
Josh Hutcherson. In Journey 2, Josh returns as Sean Anderson, a young man forced to travel to a strange and deadly island to search for his missing grandfather (Caine). Sean’s be-muscled stepfather, Hank Parsons (Johnson), comes along for the ride and together with a helicopter pilot and his daughter Kailani (played by Vanessa), he embarks on a discovery of the hidden treasures – and perils – of this seeming paradise.
Although Johnson’s biceps tend to steal whatever scene they’re in (‘Dwayne is just a big teddy bear in spite of his muscles’), Vanessa, as Sean’s love interest, provides some much-needed feminine respite from the film’s abundant male charms. Yet she’s no wilting flower. Says director Brad Peyton: ‘She was doing all the stunts, diving into this huge tank we had built for the underwater scenes and doing all the harness work herself. She was no weakling.’ Indeed, Vanessa may possess a delicate prettiness, but her hobbies include activities such as hiking, scuba diving and cliff jumping. ‘I’m an adrenalin junkie,’ she admits. ‘I like stepping into the unknown.’
Vanessa refers to High School Musical as 'a crazy time that just came out of nowhere'
Vanessa undoubtedly took a step into the unknown when she signed on for Disney’s High School Musical in 2006. Originally a made-for-TV film, it proved such a hit worldwide that its stars – Zac Efron, Ashley Tisdale and Vanessa – became household names…at least in houses reverberating to the screams of its tween fans. Two more films and assorted HSM albums, concerts and even ice tours later, and Zac and Vanessa, who played star-crossed teen loves Troy and Gabriella, were a global phenomenon.
It was, admits Vanessa, ‘a crazy time that just came out of nowhere. One day we were filming in Salt Lake City, Utah and the next, we were flying to Brazil, performing in front of 75,000 people. We were teenagers, going on press tours in our own private jet and I remember Ashley telling me, “I’m going to get one of these and it’s going to have Louis Vuitton seats.” It was crazy, amazing stuff.’
And it wasn’t just the young fans who were out of control. ‘Oh, the mums [were] crazy, pushing their children into you,’ she laughs. ‘They’d get really mad and aggressive if you didn’t do what they asked you to, but because it was for their child, it was considered OK. They’ve called me a b**** when I wouldn’t be in a photo with them because I was in a rush, and it’s just something you have to laugh at. But,’ she shrugs, ‘I can’t dish on the mums because they take their children to the cinema!
‘Girls would claw at Zac and, because they were teenagers with a lot of energy, they would chase for a long time. He had some crazy incidents when girls would try to rip his clothes off and he’d leave with claw marks all over him and his clothing in pieces.’ Didn’t Vanessa mind, seeing as she was dating him at the time? ‘Not really,’ she says. ‘They were obsessed with the character and who they wanted to see, so I was like, “Go for it!” I know who he actually is inside.’
Vanessa may well know who Zac is inside, but today she’s keeping that information largely under her hat. They were a couple for almost five years, but split at the end of 2010 amid reports that they had grown apart. They had been careful not to discuss their relationship in public and though it might have been a youthful romance, it certainly wasn’t lacking intensity – not least because of the public scrutiny it received. At times the attention was unbearable, particularly when a leaked n*de photo of Vanessa, intended to be private, surfaced on the net in 2007, with another set of photos following two years later. The pictures made for a tricky situation with her employer Disney, and Vanessa issued a public apology a day later.
Of that period now, Vanessa admits, ‘That was the s****iest time ever…it was horrible. I just remember hiding out with my mum and sister and there’d be 30 paparazzi sitting outside the house being loud and obnoxious. It wasn’t a good time, but I took it for what it was and moved on.’ Did she ever find out who leaked the photos? ‘Well, that’s a whole other thing,’ she says cautiously, ‘and I mean, who would do that to somebody? It was a mean thing to do and I hope they go to hell,’ she says before smiling: ‘Just kidding!’
Kidding or not, it was an unwelcome introduction to some of the more unsavoury aspects of fame – ones which Vanessa could scarcely have imagined when she dreamed of becoming an actress as a child growing up in Salinas, California. She appeared in her first play aged three, ‘and I basically did community theatre and any kind of plays I could during the summer because I loved performing
so much’. Her parents Gregory, an ex-fireman, and Gina, who worked in a series of office jobs, encouraged Vanessa’s acting aspirations: ‘I don’t know how they did it, but they invested in my singing and dancing lessons and supported me all the way. I must have run them into debt.’
She joined the Orange County High School of the Arts at 12 (Glee’s Matthew Morrison ranks among its famous alumni) and although her exotic good looks – the result of a blend of Native American, Filipino and Irish blood – must have made her stand out from an early age, she admits, ‘I didn’t really grow into my looks until my teens and, even then,I was just this really shy kid. I’d sit and stare at the clouds during break time and there was this one girl who used to pull my hair and call me a loser.’ Vanessa was subsequently home-schooled, ‘and that was definitely a lonely time,’ she says. ‘I had a few acquaintances and I’ve probably never used the word “acquaintance” as much as I did back then.’
But if friendships were hard to come by, work was anything but. Her first movie role was in Thirteen – a film starring Evan Rachel Wood and Holly Hunter that sparked much controversy dealing, as it did, with topics such as underage sex and drug abuse – and was followed by roles in films such as Thunderbirds and TV shows such as Drake & Josh and The Brothers Garcia. And then HSM came along. ‘I’d been going to all these auditions and wasn’t getting anything from Disney,’ says Vanessa, ‘so I didn’t want to go to this one. Mum said: “I’ve got a good feeling about this” and all I can say is thank God for mums! She had some sort of intuition about it.’
Along with success and fame, Vanessa admits that HSM afforded her ‘all kinds of experiences I’d never had.
I got to have my first prom, I got to graduate and I got to hang out with my friends. On the final day of filming we said, “This is the last day of our childhood – we’ve got to grow up now”, so it was pretty emotional.’
It also gave Vanessa a huge fanbase, not least among male admirers, and even though during our interview she insists she has been single since her split from Zac (‘I’m young and too free to have to worry about someone else – I’m the best being me when I’m completely free’), she’s been linked with both her Journey 2 co-star Josh Hutcherson and Austin Butler, a 20-year-old actor who starred in the recent HSM spin-off Sharpay’s Fabulous Adventure. Photos have shown Vanessa and Austin being somewhat touchy feely, ‘but we’re just friends,’ she says, not altogether convincingly (later shots have shown the pair kissing). Does she have a particular type? ‘I like tall, blue-eyed blondies – you know, the skinny musician type.’ Austin, for the record, is a tall, blue-eyed blond who sings and plays guitar, ‘but I go for energies and personalities more than looks. It just happens that a lot of the guys I like seem to be blond with blue eyes.’
Romantic interludes notwithstanding, Vanessa has more than enough to keep her occupied workwise. Gimme
Shelter will be released later this year and features Vanessa as pregnant 16-year-old Apple Bailey, forced to live in a shelter after escaping her abusive mother. For the role, Vanessa chopped off her hair, put on weight (‘that part was really good fun – I could eat whatever I wanted’) and lived in a homeless shelter in New Jersey for three weeks to prepare for the role. ‘I got to be really close with the girls,’ she says, ‘and they let me in and were part of the reason I was able to play the role in the end. They could have been wary of some actress who was living with them, but they loved me and I loved them. It really changed me. Apple is a really insecure character, so I was basically telling myself I was a piece of s*** for three months and it really affected me. After filming was finished, it took me a long time to get out of that way of thinking. I completely lost myself for a while.’
There has been little respite either with her role in the forthcoming thriller The Frozen Ground. Based on the real-life story of serial killer Robert Hansen (played by John Cusack), who is believed to have murdered between 17 and 21 young women in Alaska during the 1970s and 80s, Vanessa plays Cindy Paulson, a potential victim who managed to get away. It’s another grim role – far removed from the perkiness of her HSM persona – ‘but I’m so excited to challenge myself,’ she says. ‘I’d do anything for the right part because I think if you’re given an opportunity to sink your teeth into something, you shouldn’t half-ass it and you should really push yourself.’ So she’d even consider doing nude scenes? ‘Hey, I’ve already done it!’ she laughs, alluding to those leaked photos. And then adds with the maturity of a seasoned pro: ‘You can’t take yourself too seriously, can you?’
Getting in her regular fitness session, Rosie Huntington Whiteley was spotted leaving her gym in Beverly Hills, CA this afternoon (May 15).
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