Zac Efron said he would be ‘honoured’ to play Matthew Perry in a biopic about him

Zac Efron has said he would “be honoured” to play Matthew Perry in a biopic about his life.

Before his death, Matthew Perry was planning on making a movie about his life and wanted Zac Efron to play him.

The two have already worked together on the film 17 Again where Zac Efron played Matthew Perry’s younger self.

Matthew Perry’s friend Athenna Crosby said he “wanted to make a movie about his life and have a biopic made” — and that he “wanted Zac Efron, who’s played him already, to play him again because he said he did such a good job.”

Matthew Perry tragically passed away aged 54 at his home in Los Angeles on the 28th of October. His funeral took place in LA on Saturday, attended by family and friends including his Friends cast members.

Zac and Matthew during promo for 17 Again in 2009 (Via YouTube)

At the premiere of his new film Iron Claw in Texas, Zac Efron said: “I’m honoured to hear he was thinking of me to play him. We’ll see. I’d be honoured to do it.”

“He was a mentor to me, and we made a really cool film together.”

He said: “I looked up to him, I learned comedic timing from that guy. I mean, when we were filming 17 Again, it was so surreal for me to look across and have him be there, because I’ve learned so much from him, from his whole life.”

In 17 Again, Matthew played Mike, a middle-aged husband and dad who wanted to go back to his high school days. A freak encounter with a time vortex sends Mike back 20 years to become his teenage self played by Zac Efron.

He added that he is “still devastated by the fact that he is gone.”

Zac Efron has previously turned him down, though. In an interview with Sirius XM last year, Perry said that he had asked Efron to play the lead role in a film that Perry had written and planned to direct, but that Efron had “said no”.

For the female lead in the biopic, he said that The White Lotus actress Aubrey Plaza “almost did it” and that it “would have been perfect because I think she’s great. There’s some dramatic stuff in this too. She came very close, and it would have been perfect.”

Featured images via S_Bukley/Shutterstock and Featureflash Photography/Shutterstock.

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