Zac Efron and Michelle Rodriguez are apparently a thing, if you haven’t heard by now. The two have been vacationing together in Sardinia, Italy for the past week and have not been shy around paparazzi cameras documenting the budding relationship (or whatever you want to call it) — which unfortunately we can’t post photos of because we’ll get sued, but you can view them here and here.
At face value, this sounds like the most random pairing ever, given his squeaky clean Disney roots and her, well, “colorful” background. Plus isn’t she supposed to be gay? But once you delve into it a little bit more and consider whatever the hell is going on with Zac Efron these days, maybe it starts to make sense. Let’s break this down into scientific categories and figure it out.
Age: Zac Efron is 26 and Michelle Rodriguez is 36, so while that’s a pretty big age difference considering that Rodriguez is his senior — which you don’t see as much of — it’s certainly not unreasonable.
General consensus: Sure, why not.
Professional Works: Michelle Rodriguez has appeared almost exclusively (or completely exclusively?) in badass roles, starting out her career in Girlfight, and from there moving onto films such as Fast and the Furious, Resident Evil and BloodRayne to Lost, Avatar and the Machete movies.
Zac Efron on the other hand, began his career doing musical stuff like the High School Musical flicks and Hairspray (and before that some WB teen drama, Summerland) before moving into rom-com territory with garbage like 17 Again, The Lucky One and New Year’s Eve and is now doing (bad) frat humor with That Awkward Moment and (good) frat humor with Neighbors. Additionally, there’s also been some smaller budget film festival stuff peppered in there.
General consensus: Career-wise they could not possibly have less in common.
Prior Relationships: As we all know Zac Efron dated Vanessa Hudgens, who me met while filming High School Musical, from 2005-2010. Since then he has been linked to Lily Collins and Neighbors costar Halston Sage.
As it turns out, now that I’ve done some research, Michelle Rodriguez is not, in fact, gay — and has been linked to everyone from Vin Diesel to Kristanna Loken, and most recently to model Cara Delevingne.
General consensus: Well, being that Vanessa Hudgens is half Filipino-Chinese-Spanish on her mother’s side, it’s obvious that Zac has got a thing for Latinos. And although seems like Michelle’s ball swings more on the “lady” side of the court — to be fair, Zac Efron is also very pretty. I can see the attraction here.
PR Disasters: Michelle Rodriguez, yeeesh. Where do I start. She was arrested for assault against a roommate in 2002 and from there racked up a handful of DUIs and hit and runs which she attended court-ordered rehabilitation for, received probation and twice spent time in jail — both times she scored early release due to overcrowding, the last in 2008.
Zac Efron on the other hand, spent voluntary time in rehab for alcoholism and substance abuse last year and according to wikipedia, has been sober since June of 2013. Being that he was punched in the face by a homeless man while spending some time in a sketchy neighborhood earlier this year and the very fact that he is now dating Michelle Rodriquez, I don’t think that’s probably true anymore
General consensus: I don’t think Michelle Rodriguez is a very good influence on that boy.
OVERALL CONCLUSION: It looks like we have kind of a draw on our hands. I will concede that while, yes, on paper Zac Efron and Michelle Rodriguez technically make sense together, the only thing that could possibly be worse for his career at this point would be getting caught pants down with Lindsay Lohan on a cocaine-fueled joyride in a stolen car. But since it seems like Michelle Rodriguez never stays with any single V or D for very long, the whole thing will in all likelihood all blow over before any permanent damage can be done.