[Source: AP]

Zac Efron didn’t realize how much he needed a hug.

He’d transformed himself into a mass of muscle and repressed emotion to play professional wrestler Kevin Von Erich in the new film “The Iron Claw.” It was a taxing role and unlike anything he’d done before, both physically and psychologically. He often found himself with real bruises from recreating fights in the ring. Downtime between shots, too, was usually spent lifting.

But he didn’t appreciate how much it was affecting him until he and Lily James sat down to film the first date between his character and the woman who would marry him. Pam tells Kevin that he has oldest brother syndrome. Kevin tells her that he’s not actually the oldest: That brother died in an accident when he was 6 and Kevin was 5. He says he’s fine, but Pam gets out of her seat, walks around the table and drapes her arms around Kevin, who seems to melt in the warmth of a love that’s not conditional.

“It felt very needed, that hug,” Efron told The Associated Press in a joint interview with James. “It was the first time I’d embraced anyone in months without it being a fake punch, or someone trying to submit me or get me to tap out.”

Efron is half-laughing but also not. If you know anything about the Von Erichs, sometimes referred to as the Kennedys of wrestling, you know that the tragic death of the oldest brother is not the last that they would endure. In fact, the completely true account of what would transpire was too much for even the film to bear: By the time Kevin was 35 he’d have lost his four remaining brothers, three to suicide. For “The Iron Claw,” in theaters Friday, writer-director Sean Durkin made the decision to take the youngest, Chris, out entirely.

“The Iron Claw” is still primarily about the relationship between the brothers David (Harris Dickinson), Kerry (Jeremy Allen White) and Mike (Stanley Simons) and their father Fritz (Holt McCallany), a wrestler who dreamt of greatness for himself and his family at any cost. Kevin told Durkin that he just wanted audiences to know how much the brothers loved one another.

As a lifetime wrestling fan who grew up following the Von Erichs, who presided over the Texas wrestling scene in the 1970s and ‘80s, Durkin was fascinated by ideas of American masculinity, trauma and grief, as well as Kevin’s relationship with Pam that somehow survived through it all.

Though Kevin had spoken a lot about his life after the deaths, there wasn’t much Pam “out there,” Durkin found. But instead of a hinderance, it provided an opportunity to be creative and make it personal. He’d already decided that he wanted to write and figure out the story before getting in touch with his real-life subjects.

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