Zac Efron has revealed getting behind the decks and spinning some tunes isn’t as easy as it may look.

The 27-year-old actor had to practise his DJing skills to portray an aspiring music producer in coming-of-age drama We Are Your Friends.

Zac Efron stars in We Are Your Friends
Zac Efron gets on the decks for We Are Your Friends (StudioCanal)

“I have DJ’d before. I haven’t done it properly, I’ve had a lot of help,” he explained.

“There’s definitely a lot of buttons and a lot of knobs, but once you get the hang of it and you spend enough time on that deck, you’re going to get a kick out of it.”

The heartthrob continued: “I can do it as long as there’s somebody there, watching over my shoulder. I would say I’m proficient at it, but by no means am I going to be headlining any wrap parties or anything like that.”

The California-born star trained with Swedish DJ Alesso and Los Angeles-based DJ and producer Jason Stewart, known as Them Jeans.

“DJing is hard, definitely much harder than I thought it would be. It’s truly an art form,” Zac admitted.

“I got decks so I could practise at home. Put away the video games and just spin. It was probably pretty annoying for my neighbours, but luckily I have cool neighbours.”

We Are Your Friends marks the directorial feature-length debut of Max Joseph, best known for being Nev Schulman’s sidekick on Catfish: The TV Show.

The pair met for the first time during the casting process, and hit it off immediately, even enjoying “date nights” at Zac’s favourite sushi restaurant in LA’s San Fernando Valley.

“I hadn’t seen Catfish. I’m stoked to say that I became best friends [with Max] before I knew anything about Catfish, so it was pure Max that I fell in love with, director Max, not Catfish Max,” the actor said.

We Are Your Friends is in cinemas now.