We’ve known the name Chloë Moretz for almost a decade, which is quite a feat given she’s only 18 years old. She’s already carved out a successful career playing numerous badass parts, namely as an 11-year-old Hit-Girl in Kick-Ass. And her latest film, The 5th Wave, shows her taking on yet another strong role.
In it she plays the lead character, a regular teenager called Cassie who fights to survive following an alien apocalypse. It’s based on the YA novel of the same name by Rick Yancey. And rather than use her previous experience of action films, she actually had to train to be more “normal” and forget how to use guns. We invited Chloë into BuzzFeed UK’s London office to open up about the role. We discussed everything from how the “Wavers” will react to the film adaptation, to the pressure of bringing a much-loved book to life, to the importance of female roles in movies and the lack of female directors being used in the industry. Here’s what went down…
What was it about this film that first appealed to you?
Chloë Moretz: For me, it was when I first read the book. And what I liked about it is that she, Cassie Sullivan, the character that I play, she didn’t feel incredibly masculine, she didn’t feel incredibly feminine, it felt very much like a realistic depiction of the generation that we’re living in. You know there’s this “millennial generation” – it felt like a very adequate depiction of young women and me right now.
The book and movie is aimed at these millennials. Do you think a lot of girls and even boys the same age will see themselves in this movie?
CM: Definitely. I think that’s the interesting thing about it is it kind of breaks the stereotypical, you know, being played to one specific gender and age range. I went to the movie and saw it with my whole family – which is four older brothers, my oldest brother is 34; my mom is in her fifties – and all of us, for completely separate reasons, enjoyed the movie. And I thought that was really interesting, that kind of tells you a lot about the project in the sense that it is a much broader spectrum than this incredibly concentrated, tiny focused group that it’s supposed to be based for, but it’s not.
It’s based on the books. Is it weird being part of this kind of movie compared to your others because there’s already such a huge fan base out there already?
CM: People have loved this book for much longer than when we decided to make it into a movie. I think it gives you a sense of good nerves. It’s good nerves that you feel pushed to do it justice. You know the feeling – every fan knows the feeling of being a huge fan of a book series or a book and going to the theatre and sitting down and being so heavily disappointed. I think because I was a fan of the book predominantly, I put on my own pressure, my own fan-based pressure on myself to do Cassie justice. So I think that you can really see that in the film with all the characters and with the film as a whole.
There seems to be a big surge at the moment to turn YA books into movies. Do you think this one has the potential to be as big as The Hunger Games, The Maze Runner et al?
CM: I mean, I think the world is kind of changing and there’s so many ways for things to go. I think we have seen a lot of projects that this movie looks like but the thing is that this movie isn’t all that it seems. It’s modern, it’s real, it’s really a great character-based story for young adults to be able to kind of fall in love with. And also it’s sci-fi, there’s fun thriller sci-fi wild elements to it and it’s incredibly fearful – in a lot of moments you’re left on the edge of your seat. So it’s very different from the other films and I think it’s hard for people to differentiate their brains from what we’ve seen over the past eight years – but if they did I think they could see the movie for more than what they think it is.
Full interview: buzzfeed
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