Zac Efron struggled to ‘separate’ himself from Ted Bundy in new biopic: ‘It was almost impossible’

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Zac Efron’s new role as serial killer Ted Bundy apparently took a toll on the actor, best known for starring in Disney's smash-hit “High School Musical” movies.

At the London premiere of “Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil and Vile” on Wednesday evening, the 31-year-old actor was asked about separating himself from his character, who was convicted of killing three women and confessed to murdering more than 30 others across the U.S. in the 1970s before his execution by electric chair in January 1989.

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“I’ve never played a role in which I really have to separate myself from when I go home at night and it was almost impossible. I’d like to say that I did it successfully but I couldn’t,” Efron said on the red carpet, according to DailyMail.com.

“I really wasn’t interested in playing a serial killer. I’m not in the business of glamorizing a horrendous person or his acts, but there is something unique about the way we went into the psyche of Ted, and his longtime girlfriend Liz,” he added.

Zac Efron (pictured in January) said this week that "it was almost impossible" to "separate" himself from his character, Ted Bundy, in the new biopic about the serial killer called "Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil and Vile." (2018 Invision)

“Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil and Vile” is set to be released on May 3. The biopic of the serial killer is told from the perspective of Bundy’s ex-girlfriend Elizabeth “Liz” Kloepfer, who is played by Lily Collins.

“It’s a different perspective and not your run-of-the-mill serial killer cliché, body count gets higher and higher and oh the guy you always knew did it, did it,” Efron continued. “This is what it was like to be there on the day, we didn’t know if he was innocent or guilty, we just saw Ted Bundy through their eyes.”

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Last year, Efron explained that the film is not meant to “glorify” Bundy or his horrific acts but rather to take a "deep" look into how he used his "good guy" persona to dupe people.

"He wasn't a person to be glorified. [The movie] simply tells a story and sort of how the world was able to be charmed over by this guy who was notoriously evil and the vexing position that so many people were put in, the world was put in. It was fun to go and experiment in that realm of reality," Efron explained to Entertainment Tonight last March.

Fox News’ Jennifer Earl contributed to this report.