She may be just 21, but CHLOË GRACE MORETZ’s intelligence and outspokenness transcends her years. As she helps to raise awareness of modern-day gay conversion camps with her new film, the actress gets vocal on sexuality, dropping out of blockbusters and why you won’t see her kissing on the street.
It’s morning at a coffee shop in North Hollywood and Chloë Grace Moretz is telling me about her upcoming break in Provincetown, Massachusetts, with her four older brothers, to celebrate her mother Teri’s 60th birthday (Moretz describes the family’s special bond as “symbiotic”). It’s the actress’ second trip to the gay vacation spot in a month, after visiting for the first time two weeks ago to show her new film, The Miseducation of Cameron Post, at the Provincetown Film Festival. “I’m fully obsessed with it,” she reports. “I have two gay brothers in my family and we love being surrounded by gay people and gay things. We were trying to figure out where to take our mom and we were like, she would love this. She loves biking, she loves lobster, she loves Massachusetts, and it’s so gay that she’ll just f***ing die.”
At 21 years old, Moretz, who’s been working since the age of five, is self-possessed, quick-witted and willfully unfiltered. “I’ve done interviews for 15 years so I’m used to them,” she says. She certainly looks the part: a black blazer with fur cuffs; a ruffled, navy-and-red, polka-dot mini wrap dress; white Working Girl Reebok sneakers. “And my Prada,” she adds, referring to the Cahier shoulder bag sitting on the table, gifted to her by the fashion house. “She’s a pretty girl.”
By her own admission, Moretz hates taking breaks (the famously prolific actor has worked on two dozen movies since her breakout in 2010’s Kick-Ass). “I’m horrible at vacations,” she says. “I work the entire time. I try not to, but I definitely have an issue with it. I get about four days of sleeping as much as I want and then once I’m caught up, I’m like, I’ve got to do something.”
“I’m horrible at VACATIONS, I work the entire time. I get about four days of sleeping as much as I WANT and then I’m like, I’ve got to do SOMETHING”
Recently, however, she bit the bullet and took a year and a half off to – as she puts it – reconfigure her career. “I wanted to reconnect to my job and what I love about acting. I dropped out of some really big movies,” Moretz admits, alluding to projects that included the live-action remake of The Little Mermaid. Surprisingly, she says, “I loved it. Just reading and writing and working and listening and watching. Just soaking up anything I could.” She spent two weeks alone in Tulum, Mexico, on a whim. She lived in a shack on the beach in Santa Barbara for a month. She did ritualistic things like having Sunday dinners at the Laurel Canyon home that she shares with her brother Trevor and their mother, who lives in the guest house; Trevor is the reason Moretz became an actor, helping to raise her and now co-managing her with Teri [Moretz’s father has been out of the picture since she was young]. Moretz asked her mother about growing up as a woman in the South and talked to Trevor and her other brother Colin about growing up gay. “I was like, ‘I never actually asked you what it was like to come out. And you came out under a very religious upbringing, because our family was very Christian Baptist. What did that mean? Were you afraid? What was your process?’”
Full interview: net-a-porter.com
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