Zac Efron's Day Off: EW Photo Showcase

Image credit: PHOTOGRAPH BY BEN WATTS

''I would love to just sit down and talk with Leonardo DiCaprio and Johnny Depp and pick their brains about their early careers. They do it because they love it, not because they enjoy being famous. You have to have good foresight and be really careful. If you don't adapt and learn at a very young age, you can really mess up.''

Strange as it sounds, Efron's future seems as wide open as that of the high school seniors on the street corner. Just weeks shy of his 21st birthday, Efron is plotting his route from teen phenom to adult actor. It's a perilous path, littered with the failed careers of former pretty boys (anyone heard from C. Thomas Howell lately?), and Efron knows he's got a tough hike ahead of him. He's leaving behind the franchise that made him a superstar, after the Oct. 24 release of High School Musical 3: Senior Year, in which Efron and his fellow Wildcats (Vanessa Hudgens, Ashley Tisdale, and Corbin Bleu) cope with going their separate ways by — what else? — putting on a show. In some ways, he's already moved on. He's spent the past year working on back-to-back leading roles in two meaty dramedies. The first, due in theaters next April 17, is 17 Again, a kind of Big-in-reverse coming-of-age story in which he plays the younger incarnation of a disenchanted loser (Matthew Perry) who wishes for a life do-over and ends up inside the body of a high school stud. He also takes a stab at indie credibility by playing a naive young actor of dubious talent who links up with the legendary Mercury Theatre in director Richard Linklater's Me and Orson Welles. The film recently debuted at the Toronto Film Festival to mixed, but generally positive, reviews and is still awaiting a distributor and release date. Meanwhile, Efron is plotting his escape from the teen scene by studying the winning playbooks of other young hunks who went legit. ''I would love to just sit down and talk with Leonardo DiCaprio and "Johnny Depp and pick their brains about their early careers,'' Efron says, citing two recent actors who have made the leap from poster boys to Oscar contenders. ''They do it because they love it, not because they enjoy being famous. You have to have good foresight and be really careful. If you don't adapt and learn at a very young age, you can really mess up.''

NEXT PAGE: ''I would never take Zac at face value,'' says Orson Welles director Richard Linklater. ''He's actually a bit of a poker player. He comes in all nice and then he just takes your money. I think you underestimate Zac at your own peril.''