Chloë Grace Moretz | Under the Radar | Music Blog for the Indie Music Magazine
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Chloë Grace Moretz

Let Me In Star Savors Her Youth

Apr 05, 2010 Issue #32 - Summer 2010 - Wasted on the Youth

“I still have an obsession with my bunny,” admits 13-year-old actress Chloë Grace Moretz. “I can’t sleep without it, and every time I travel, I go with my bunny. It’s a stuffed bunny, it’s a fake bunny, but it’s my favorite thing in the world, basically.”

Moretz’s trusted bunny, whom she named Henry because she felt that he was very British—“That’s such a British name, right?” she asks with a laugh—appropriately has accompanied her to London, where she’s filming the 3D period adventure Hugo Cabret for Martin Scorsese. Over the last year, Moretz has emerged as one of the most in-demand young actors in Hollywood, stealing scenes as Joseph Gordon-Levitt’s romance-counseling little sister in (500) Days of Summer and sparking controversy as Hit-Girl, the pint-sized superhero/assassin in Kick-Ass. Moretz has gained stature in her profession by playing colorfully precocious characters, but that doesn’t mean she’s in any rush to leave behind childhood things.

“You know, I’m pretty much still a baby, practically; I still watch SpongeBob SquarePants and stuff,” she says. “I don’t want to grow up too fast. I enjoy being young. I’m able to live life and not have as many responsibilities as I will when I am older.”

An Atlanta native with four older brothers, Moretz has been acting professionally since the age of six. This fall, she will star in Let Me In, a remake of the 2008 Swedish vampire film Let the Right One In, an art house hit in the States. She plays Abby, a vampire who has lived for roughly 200 years as a 13-year-old girl. Though Moretz has excelled at playing kids mature beyond their years, there’s little that can prepare a young actor for the complexity of portraying a 200-year-old child.

“She knows so much and is like an adult, but also, she’s very naïve because her brain hasn’t been able to mature that much, because she’s stuck in a 13-year-old’s body,” Moretz explains. “I had to bring so many different aspects of life to it, ‘cause she is dead, ‘cause she’s a vampire, she’s not living, she doesn’t have a beating heart. So, it’s weird to portray this character who has emotion, but her emotion is different from a human’s. She’s seen 200 years worth of humanity—she’s been looking at it, she wants to be that—and she wants to be able to grow old. She wants to become a woman and she wants to live life.”

In the film, set in Los Alamos, New Mexico during the mid-1980s, Abby falls in love with her 12-year-old neighbor Owen, a lonely, bullied outsider. Moretz gushes when asked about her co-star Kodi Smit-McPhee, who plays Owen.

“He’s the sweetest guy, and I still talk to him,” she says. “He’s an absolutely amazing actor.” When the topic turns to Moretz’s first screen kiss, which she shares with Smit-McPhee in the film, she laughs and begins to stammer before confirming, “We do kiss in the film.”

“‘Cause I am 13, I don’t know a lot about that stuff,” Moretz says. “It was definitely something different for me to explore as an actor. I love my mom, and I love my dad, and I love my family, and so I definitely know what love is, but that type of love I don’t know.”

Talking to Moretz, it’s evident that she had a firm grasp of Abby’s unique conflicts and emotions. Still, she admits that it’s difficult to explain the process of embodying such a character during filming.

“When you put on those clothes and you put on the darker makeup, make your hair like the character, you become a different person,” she says. “I’m a lot like Abby in a way, ‘cause I am a strong girl, and I know what I want, and I go and I get it. I stick to my plan and I get it.”

As inspiration for Hit-Girl, Moretz looked to Natalie Portman’s performance as a 12-year-old apprentice assassin in the 1994 film The Professional (aka Leon). Moretz cites Portman’s intelligence and independence as admirable qualities, and aspires to follow in her footsteps.

“I want to go to college, and I want to be educated beyond just being an actress,” Moretz says. “I want to help the world.”

With her strong will and astute philosophy toward life, Moretz has the goods to accomplish her ambitions. But she also understands that, as a 13-year-old, some goals are not worth pursuing, one of them being a weeknight bedtime later than 9:30 p.m.

“My parents are super strict,” she says. “So if I negotiate, it will go to like 8:30. They’re those type of parents. If you start trying to negotiate, they definitely turn it in the opposite direction and make you go to bed earlier.”



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GrettY
March 9th 2012
1:11pm

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Angelo
June 10th 2012
1:42am

I really eoejynd this as well. It holds its own with the Swedish version. While it does stray a little more from the book, this is one of those rare cases where that is a good thing. Some of the elements in the book don’t translate well to the screen, and others seem like they were added just to be disturbing. Abby’s relationship with her father is a prime example. Personally, I think both movie versions might be more enjoyable than the book. The movies focus on the excellent story and the relationship between Owen and Abby, while leaving out parts of the book that I didn’t really miss.On a side note, if you want to watch the original movie, be careful. There are two versions of the subtitles. The original swedish movie was released with excellent English subs. After its success, an American version was put out with EXTREMELY dumbed-down subs. I have watched a few scenes side-by-side and almost all of the nuance is lost in the American version.

melvin larrimore
November 14th 2012
9:11pm

how old is you

s
February 7th 2016
1:34pm

I can see the connection to Leon the hitman in Kick Ass. Natalie Portman does play an exceptional character in the film and So does Chloe even though it is more of a comedy.