Despite a decade’s worth of acting experience, including a film with Martin Scorsese on her resume, Chloë Grace Moretz received “pushback” from her colleagues as a teen actress. Particularly, from her male counterparts.
While appearing on Tuesday’s episode of the Reign with Josh Smith podcast, the Hugo star recalled being “shut down” by older men in Hollywood, some of whom would go so far as to “infantilize” her while on set or during meetings.
“A big part of being the lead in a show or a movie is you kind of set the tone for the set,” Moretz said of her Carrie days. “At that point, I had already worked for so many years, almost 10 years at that point, and as I continued through having more important roles on set as I grew up, it was always very interesting to see the pushback that I would get from a lot of people.”
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Moretz noticed she wasn’t the only woman whose suggestions were being dismissed either. As a teen star, she took note of “who would be really unhappy with a young woman” voicing her ideas. The pattern began to follow her from set to set.
“The majority of it was older men, for sure, who would infantilize me. If I had real things to bring to the table, a lot of the time it would get shot down,” Moretz shared.
The Peripheral star described it as a “really wild power struggle and power dynamic of a young girl who had worked for already [over a decade] and was the lead of the movies but was still a kid in every sense of the word.”
At 14 years old, Moretz remembers learning how to advocate for herself — and to an older man, who more than likely had the power to axe her career, nonetheless. “Having to even advocate to an older man on behalf of your 14, 15, 16-year-old self is a really, really crazy kind of mind f***,” she said.
Horribly enough — although ultimately to her benefit — Moretz learned the power of manipulation at an early age.
“It kind of taught me how to propose questions in a way to make the ideas their ideas,” she explained.
Moretz added her tone had to be “very sweet” and she often had to take a “very kind of backfoot” approach while still standing strong.
Upon entering adulthood, Moretz was done playing the tip-toe game. “As I grew up it kind of got to that ‘f*** it’ time.”
Now, at 25 years old, Moretz feels like, “I know a set and I know filmmaking like the back of my hand.”
