LET US NOW EXAMINE ZAC EFRON

A Disney-minted star for his role in the "High School Musical" franchise, Zac Efron has all the hallmarks of a teen idol (despite being 22): a silky singing voice, a famous girlfriend (his co-star Vanessa Hudgens) and the constant insinuations of Perez Hilton that he is gay.

"Me and Orson Welles", directed by Richard Linklater, is Efron's first starring role in a film not designated for tweens. Linklater personally chose him for the part, saying he'd "rarely met somebody less conflicted about his ability." Set in the late 1930s, the film spends a week following Richard Samuels (Efron), a young actor, as he assimilates into Orson Welles's production of "Julius Caesar" at the Mercury Theatre. Efron sleepily attends high-school classes by day and rehearsals at night, negotiating the clashing egos of Welles and the other actors, while fielding the playful flirtations of an ambitious colleague (Claire Danes). The film is about the enchantment of theatre and the guilelessness of our hero as he finds himself swept up into Welles's world—and ejected just as suddenly.

Efron is convincing as the male ingénue partly because there is something unexpectedly fey about the young actor's face. He has dark brows, symmetrical features and astonishingly feminine eyes—an attribute that leads to frequent accusations that he wears mascara on celebrity-gossip sites. He resembles a robot designed by an 11-year-old girl, uncanny in his near-human likeness.

It's not often that a male actor's looks precede his performance (except for the notable exception of Robert Pattinson, everyone's favourite vampire from the "Twilight" series, whose looks constitute his performance.) We generally take our young leading men on the basis of their talents and grant them sexiness as their due—think James McEvoy, Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Shia Labeouf. But Efron makes this impossible. He could never play an ordinary person. Fittingly, his oeuvre so far has been limited to portraying talented, handsome, fame-seeking young men (in "Orson" as well as in "Hairspray" and "17 Again").

Efron is convincing in Linklater's film, but this is hardly a promise of future success, since the role also happens to be the story of Efron's life. Still, those of us fascinated by the wax-figure oddness of Efron's appearance can hold out hope that he (or an astute director) will take note of this strange quality and harness it for a darker—or at least a more challenging—end.

"Me and Orson Welles", in select cinemas in America and Britain

~ MOLLY YOUNG