Zac Efron was banned from crying until the last day of filming on 'The Iron Claw'.
Zac Efron wasn't allowed to breakdown until the final day of The Iron Claw shoot
'The Paperboy' star appears in the film alongside 'The Bear' actor Jeremy Allen White playing real life wrestlers Kevin and Kerry Von Erich who were raised by strict father Fritz Von Erich (played by Holt McCallany) who taught them to withhold their emotions - so director Sean Durkin made sure Efron didn't breakdown until he filmed an emotional final scene at the end of the shoot.
In an interview with The Hollywood Reporter, Durkin explained: "It was all leading up to that [final scene] for Zac, because there were so many moments in the film where his character just wants to cry.
"His character just wants to break, and I just kept saying to him: ‘No, not now, not here'.
"And so he was keeping it all in, and when we finally got to that final day, he was just full of tears. We did seven takes of that shot with the boys. He just kept going, and it was really amazing."
The movie also features Harris Dickinson, Stanley Simons, Holt McCallany, Maura Tierney and Lily James and tells the story of the pair of WWE Hall of Famers who came from a family of professional wrestlers led by patriarch Fritz, with five of his six sons all following him into the sport.
The brothers - including David, Mike and Kris - rose to fame throughout the 1980s but their story was marred by personal tragedies which came to be known as the Von Erich curse.
Durkin went on to explain he doesn't actually believe in the curse, but he's convinced the family members did and it became a self-fufilling prophecy.
He added to THR: "I do not believe in curses, at least not in the mythical sense. I do believe in the psychology of a curse, and when you’re in a family where a lot of bad things have happened and happened to you, it’s very easy to believe that you are going to get sucked into that pattern.
"And sometimes, that can almost become self-fulfilling, but that psychology certainly can take a toll and almost act as much as the idea of a mythical course could act. So, no, I don’t believe in it, but yes, I think the results of it can be the same."
'The Iron Claw' is released on December 22.
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