Zac Efron: The New American Heart Throb

"This is my favorite place to eat breakfast, because you don't see the SUVs with the blacked-out windows here," Zac Efron says as he sits at a greasy diner in Toluca Lake, California. (The name is Patty's, but don't tell the paparazzi.) Efron is wearing mirrored sunglasses and a brown knit hat, which, in the summer sun, is making him sweat. He hasn't had a decent shower, because the hot water in his nearby two-bedroom apartment was shut off today. "As long as I stay boring, I think I'll be fine," he declares.

So that's your strategy for success? Just stay boring? "Yeah, seriously," he says. "I'm going to try."

He picks at his scrambled eggs and brown rice with his fork. "I've never done interviews like this before," he says. "I'm still so new to this, it's literally a one-in-a-million chance that I'm here." Efron is a nineteen-year-old celebrity doing his best to act like a normal nineteen-year-old boy, which, as anyone who reads the tabloids knows, isn't easy in Hollywood. If you've never actually heard of Efron, that's OK. He's only the actor, singer, dancer and heartthrob who launched the biggest-selling CD of last year and what may be the most popular made-for-TV movie of all time. Of course, he barely even sang on the album, but we'll get to that later. That's all part of why life is a little confusing for Efron right now.

Efron's current status stems from three words that will haunt him for the rest of his life: High School Musical, the Disney Channel song-and-dance movie about an unlikely love between a school jock (Efron) and a brainiac transfer student (Vanessa Hudgens) who are rumored to be linked in real life -- but more on that later, too. Efron's aw-shucks charm, crush-worthy good looks and charismatic dance moves were to a large degree responsible for the movie, DVD and soundtrack shattering records. But unlike, say, Ratatouille, High School Musical has no double-entendres, visionary artistry or adult appeal. It is not even bubblegum enough to be enjoyable on an ironic level. It is plain vanilla, no sprinkles; it is the type of hormone-drained, rebellion-free idealized teen fantasy that parents want their kids to see (the lovers in the movie don't even kiss). And their kids are seeing it -- tens of millions of them.

It is one of the crowning achievements of a powerful new pop-culture demographic that makes the kids who liked Good Charlotte seem elderly in comparison. Empowered by the ability to buy entertainment on the Internet at the press of a button without even understanding what money is, these tweenyboppers are even surpassing hip-hop and rock fans. Just last month, this audience helped the new double album from Miley Cyrus (star of Disney's Hannah Montana) hit the Number One slot, selling more copies in its first week than debuts from American Idol stars like Kelly Clarkson and Chris Daughtry.