ADULT EDUCATION
Chloë Grace Moretz leaves child-star roles behind
“This is the adult-ish Chloë,” declares Chloë Grace Moretz, the former child star known for her role in the Kick-Ass films — but who is now a 21-year-old with serious ambitions.
Moretz was promoting her new movie The Miseducation of Cameron Post, which is just the kind of film that the 2.0 version of Moretz wants to tackle — the story of a teen sent to a gay-conversion camp by family horrified when she’s found making out with another girl.
It’s got everything she’s looking for: a socially relevant theme, a complicated female lead and a female director, Desiree Akhavan.
Q You recently called out Hollywood for backing another movie about gay conversion. (In an interview with the Los Angeles Times, Moretz noted the “discrepancy” between the money behind Cameron Post and Boy Erased. Moretz noted that the latter film was written and directed by am an—in other words, “shot through a straight male gaze.”) What’s been the reaction?
A It’s opened a conversation. The New York Times had a really interesting article the other day (about the small percentages of women in lead roles and in directors’ chairs). The fact that the ratio hasn’t changed? I thought that was just ... an interesting enlightenment.
When you watch movies right now it’s really wonderful when you feel a difference in perspective, because it’s fresh and it’s a perspective we haven’t seen yet, and it’s really encouraging.
Q So how was it different being directed by a woman?
A It was subjective instead of objective. Everything was. And specifically when I say that, I mean the sex scenes. In the movie, I would say particularly those scenes struck me as some of the most beautiful, because they progressed the character. Without them, you wouldn’t understand Cameron in the same way — and I don’t think that goes for all sex scenes in all movies.
The ways that female sex and female pleasure are depicted onscreen has never been naturalistic. It’s always and forever been in every way objectifying women. It’s never a beautiful, budding sexual experience. There’s a reason for sex in real life. We don’t just have sex to have sex. Even if it’s a very quick transaction, there’s always a reason for it and you’re different after it than you were before it. And to see that finally depicted on screen is a perfect depiction of not just a female lens, but a queer female lens.
Q Tell me about your activism.
A First of all, I have two gay brothers, so I’ve always been an activist for LGBT rights since I was a little girl. That was never a question; it was non-negotiable. But as I grew up, that really became my platform of who I am and part of my identity. And when I helped stump for Hillary Clinton, a big part of what I wanted to do was be inclusive to the LGBT community.
Q You’ve been acting for most of your life — are there actresses whose careers you admire?
A When I was younger especially, Natalie Portman was someone I really looked up to. She had a big platform with Léon: The Professional the same way I had with Kick-Ass. So I saw a lot of parallels there. But at the same time, she did some politically and societally shocking movies. And she was a really smart, eloquently spoken, educated young woman. She carried herself well as a teenager and then into her early 20s she made that eloquent shift. It was not dramatic. She didn’t do anything crazy. And I always connected to that.
Q What’s your dream project?
A There’s never one specific project. I think what’s important to me is choosing to work with people who haven’t had their voice out there yet. And being able to take the reins of a narrative that I think for so many years has been driven by other people, which is the female narrative. The next phase is going into filmmaking myself and directing.
Q Anything on the books?
A Yes, my brother Trevor and I actually co-direct together. It’s a really beautiful, symbiotic relationship we have there. And my brother Colin wrote this short film that blew our minds and we’re actually posing that as our first one.
Q There’s a lot of ’90s music in Cameron Post. Did you discover anything to add to your library?
A One of the first things Desi (Akhavan) did for me when I signed on was send me these two playlists full of so much ’90s brilliance. I grew up with four older brothers, and the oldest brother is 15 years older than me. People my age usually don’t know a lot of music outside of The Cranberries, so I was lucky to grow up immersed in real, true ’90s content. So I connected with a lot of the music in the movie fairly well. I also loved Des’s choice of music in the movie. I love that she choose The Breeders, like that’s such a wonderful ’90s band but one that is not usually in the movies ... and it’s nice. It breathes life into the time period.