Vanessa Hudgens

Like her High School Musical co-star Zac Efron, Vanessa Hudgens is getting out of the business of making musicals. Right now, she wants to focus on acting. She told MTV, “I love musicals, I really do. I grew up doing them, so it’ll always have a place in my heart. At the same time, it’s nice to be able to separate the two and just be able to focus on films.”

Vanessa is currently filming her first role that is not in a musical in the film Beastly, a retelling of the classic Beauty and the Beast story that is set to open in 2010. Like Efron, Hudgens would like to distance herself from musicals to avoid being typecast and limiting her career.

So far that doesn’t appear to be a problem, as she recently took a role in the upcoming Zack Snyder film Sucker Punch. Snyder is famous as the director of the movie 300. Hudgens is thrilled to be able to work with Snyder, telling MTV, “It’s an honor, I’m such a big fan of his work.”

Sucker Punch is the story of a girl whose abusive stepfather institutionalizes her. To survive, she retreats into a fantasy world, where she eventually comes up with a plan of escape.