The actress has revealed in an interview with 'Hunger' the anxiety that living surrounded by paparazzi caused her since she was 12 years old until at 18 she became a viral image on the internet and radically changed her day-to-day life
When she was 18 years old, Chloë Grace Moretz was one of the most promising faces of Hollywood to come. Her name began to stand out when the actress, at just 12 years old, got the role of Hit Girl in the superhero movie Kick-A**: Ready to Dunk.
That same year she starred in the American version of the Swedish romantic horror film Let Me In, which tells the love story between a misfit boy and a strange girl, who turns out to be a vampire. With two blockbusters behind her, Chloë Grace Moretz was showered with projects: she starred in the remake of the horror film Carrie and participated in Dark Shadows, directed by Tim Burton. Between project and project, the interpreter went from a child to a teenager and her personal life also began to receive interest: the actress was dating Brooklyn Beckham, son of David and Victoria Beckham at that time. And the paparazzi did not stop harassing her.
“I was just a girl and most of the time no one bothered me”, the actress has now revealed in an interview for Hunger, “but after Kick-A**, I saw the paparazzi for the first time; there were 10 or 15 adults surrounding a 12-year-old girl, they pushed my mother and she ended up on the ground, she didn't get hurt, but the situation was really chaotic. It is an assault on all the senses, with screams and flashes. When I got in the car, I started crying. I think that moment was a before and after for me."
Chloë Grace Moretz, the actress who speaks the same as she thinks
The photographers and the media became more fierce with the actress as she turned years old, and, although Moretz was already used to the paparazzi, she was not prepared for criticism: "I remember the day that I found out, and it hit me like a ton of bricks She was 18 years old and she was on a red carpet. I walked out of there and felt a lot of self-hatred. I was confused about my own feelings. There was a complete and jarring shift in my consciousness, I questioned who I was. 'What am I doing? Who I am? Why am I doing this? ”, She explains in the interview.
And then came the meme: on any given day in 2016, Chloë Grace Moretz was photographed walking into a hotel carrying two boxes of pizza. She wore an outfit consisting of a black top, shorts, and heels. The photo of her was edited on the internet, where her legs were lengthened and her abdomen was reduced in size. The retouched image was reminiscent of a scene from the animated series Family Guy, where Peter Griffin boasts of having very long legs.
What was apparently an internet joke became a torment for the actress: “For a long time, I was able to be the Chloë that people see and the Chloë that I am in private. Suddenly those two worlds collided and I felt very vulnerable. And then came the onslaught of horrible memes that started being sent all over my body. In fact, I have never talked about this, but there was a meme that really affected me, ”explains the actress, referring to Family Guy.
Moretz recalls expressing her disgust that everyone was publicly making fun of her body and that people were laughing at her complaints: “They were telling me, 'Shut up! It's hilarious!' I just remember sitting there and thinking, 'My body is being used as a joke and it's something I can't change about who I am, and it's being posted all over Instagram. To this day, when I see that meme, I still find it difficult.
After that, the actress admits that she became a recluse, dedicating herself exclusively to her profession and avoiding paparazzi by all means. "It's sad because she took a part of me that she used to enjoy," she admits, referring to that part that also comes into play in her profession as an actress, such as getting ready, dressing, and going to red carpets. "I think that body dysmorphia, which we all deal with in this society, is magnified because of exposure to social networks," she now says. Moretz began to live away from the spotlight, and she felt anxious when she saw paparazzi appear around her: "I felt palpitations and hyperventilated," she admits.
The pandemic gave him a break. Masks, caps, and sunglasses were great allies for celebrities since they were less recognizable in the eyes of the paparazzi. However, she lost her father during confinement: “For me, it was a time of introspection. There were many changes in a short period. It was transformative for me."
Now, he has new projects on the table. Really, she has never stopped having them. He admits in the interview that acting is "a kind of therapy" for her. She continues to lie low behind the cameras, especially since her breakup with Brooklyn Beckham. After more than 20 years of career, she already knows what it's like to be in the spotlight, and she doesn't want to be there again. “To say that the last few years have been transformative is an understatement. I am a completely different girl than I was before. Now I feel like I'm a woman." The actress turned 25 in 2022.
