The Life And Career Of Chloe Grace Moretz So Far
It seems impossible that Chloe Grace Moretz is only 25 years old. Maybe it's the 75 acting credits on her resumé, which include "Kick-Ass," "Carrie," "Suspiria," and a hilarious arc on "30 Rock." Or perhaps it's the fact that she's been an activist since she was a teenager, politically vocal and teaming up with Hillary Clinton to urge young people to vote. But mostly it's just that, while she looks so youthful, she seems to have a very old soul. Moretz is extremely self-possessed, exuding the wisdom of someone twice her age. When she was 16, she told Conan O'Brien that adults often turned to her to vent about their marital problems!
Having been in the game since other kids her age were in kindergarten, Moretz has grown up on screen. She is more careful now about the roles she chooses, wanting to be a part of progressive narratives. And, strange as it sounds, she is only just beginning. Moretz clearly has a long career ahead of her, and we are here for it. Let's take a look at the life and career of Chloe Grace Moretz so far.
How she got her start
Chloe Grace Moretz is a natural in front of the camera, and her family noticed her innate acting talents when she was just a little kid. Moretz was born in Georgia, the youngest of five with four older brothers. It was her brother Trevor who wanted to be an actor, and he could tell that Chloe had the chops already. "Even as a tiny child, she had something," he told W. The family moved to New York so Trevor could attend the Professional Performing Arts High School. Chloe was 6 at the time and liked helping her brother practice lines. Seeing her potential, Trevor switched focus from his own aspirations and became Chloe's acting coach.
Chloe Grace Moretz landed her first professional acting gig in 2004 on the TV series "The Guardian," and began getting cast in role after role after role. Over the course of the next several years, Moretz appeared in over 20 shows and films, including 2005's "The Amityville Horror." In 2009, she appeared as Joseph Gordon-Levitt's wise-beyond-her-years little sister in "500 Days of Summer," and in 2010, she landed her real breakout role in "Kick-Ass." All before turning 13 years old!
"I would say that it's an understatement to say that [acting] shaped me," she said in a 2022 interview with Philadelphia Style. "Acting and being an actor has been the most formative experience of my life."
Chloe Grace Moretz's learned some pretty cool stuff for her roles
Chloe Grace Moretz has played so many roles over the years, and some of them have required her to learn certain skills. For example, the actor had to learn to speak German for her role in the 2018 reboot of "Suspiria." Moretz told Wired, "I had to learn German, well, pieces of German ... my character was being, like, possessed by a demon, and so at the end she says some really gnarly stuff." She mentioned trying to figure out how to say the C-word in German, but there wasn't a direct translation. "Like what would have the same gravity? And so it ended up being like three different words that apparently get across that tone."
On a more wholesome note, Moretz learned how to play the cello for her 2014 film "If I Stay." "I trained with [the cello], every day for seven months, two hours a day. Honestly, I'd be silly to say that, in seven months, I learned such an intricate instrument," Moretz told Collider. "You have to surrender your entire soul to the instrument as you play it." Ultimately the film used a body double for the cello playing scenes, but Moretz must have picked up a thing or two in all those months.
She tricked Martin Scorsese into thinking she was British
In 2011, Chloe Grace Moretz starred in Martin Scorsese's film "Hugo." She had heard that the iconic director wanted to cast a British girl in the role of Isabelle, so Moretz rose to the challenge of tricking Scorsese into hiring her. "I went into the audition and I fully pretended to be from England, and that my parents were horse breeders, and that we lived in the Cotswolds," she revealed to Wired.
Perhaps Scorsese really believed the lie, or maybe he was simply impressed with her acting ability. But Moretz eventually came clean. "It was like a month into production that he was like, 'Wait, are you just doing an American accent?' And I was like, 'No, I'm like American ... my accent is southern if I don't iron it out.'"
Despite the initial trickery, Moretz and Scorsese got along famously. "We spent Christmas dinner together, basically, and we all just sang karaoke on the floor. He's the most genuine guy, and he's just so cool. [He has] more pep in his step than any other director I've worked with," Moretz recalled in an interview with A.V. Club.
Her role in Carrie messed with her skin
Like many people, Chloe Grace Moretz has struggled with acne. But the type of acne she had was more serious than just the odd smattering of zits. Moretz blames her role in 2013's remake of "Carrie" for the onset of her cystic acne, which can cause painful breakouts and is often caused by bacteria. In her Wired interview, the actor explained, "I used to have cystic acne for a really long time because of 'Carrie.' I had the blood on me every day and I got a bacterial infection."
So how did Moretz combat her cystic acne? Simple ingredients found in the kitchen. "I stopped using all these different products, and I kind of broke it all down to doing absolutely nothing — just using water, olive oil, and honey," she told Teen Vogue. While that seems like a simple solution, the psychological impact of skin problems was a bit more difficult to deal with. "[The psychological element] was the hardest thing for me," the actor said. "It strips your self-confidence in a lot of ways; you know you can't hide from it at all, and you lose a little piece of yourself."
Why Chloe Grace Moretz's role in The Peripheral is significant
In 2022, Chloe Grace Moretz's new show "The Peripheral" premiered on Amazon Prime video. It marked the actor's first role in a streaming series and her first major role after a few years of taking on smaller parts. Moretz, now 25, revealed that she went through a bit of an existential crisis after having been in the industry for most of her childhood.
She told Hunger, "There was this complete jarring shift in my consciousness, I questioned who I was. What am I doing? Who am I? Why am I doing this? Like, what does this mean?" The actor laid low for a while, especially during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, going to therapy and eventually signing on to play Flynne Fisher in "The Peripheral."
Moretz explained why the show appealed to her in an interview with NME, saying, "I feel like a lot of sci-fi doesn't really rely on familial relationships and it doesn't feel warm — so that was something I really grabbed onto with 'The Peripheral.'" She also spoke about being more discriminating when it comes to choosing her roles, now that she is no longer a child actor. "As I grew up, I realized that I wanted to peel back. I'd rather make zero movies in one year if it means I didn't connect to anything," Moretz said.
The cruel meme that deeply affected her
Like all women in the public eye, Chloe Grace Moretz has been judged on her appearance. While it sort of comes with the territory, unfortunately, one meme that was circulating online really affected Moretz's self-esteem. It was a simple photo of the actor in short shorts, carrying a couple of pizza boxes, but someone digitally altered the pic so it wasn't exactly flattering. It was then put next to a pic of a "Family Guy" character and turned into a meme.
"Everyone was making fun of my body and I brought it up with someone and they were like, 'Oh, shut the f**k up, it's funny,'" Moretz told Hunger. "And I just remember sitting there and thinking, my body is being used as a joke and it's something that I can't change about who I am, and it is being posted all over Instagram." The effect on Moretz was no laughing matter. "It took a layer of something that I used to enjoy, which was getting dressed up and going to a carpet and taking a photo, and made me super self-conscious. And I think that body dysmorphia — which we all deal with in this world — is extrapolated by the issues of social media."
But it sounds as though Moretz has come out on the other side of that painful experience with some newfound wisdom. When asked by NME what advice she'd give to the little girl still living inside her, she replied, "I'd tell my younger self to trust herself more and to stop listening to the outside influx of information from everybody around you."
She's very politically active
Chloe Grace Moretz is very outspoken when it comes to her political beliefs. Not only did the actor hit the campaign trail with Hillary Clinton during the 2016 election, she spoke at the Democratic National Convention that same year in support of her candidate. "As someone who has a following of people who care about what you say and what you stand for, you have an opportunity to use that for the betterment," she told i news.
When the election didn't go as many had expected, Moretz continued to be vocal about feminism and issues facing the LGBTQ+ community. Part of Moretz's activism surrounding LGBTQ+ rights comes from the fact that two of her brothers are gay, one of whom is Trevor, who served as an acting coach and mentor for her as a child. "I knew about the idea of praying the gay away because we're from a very Christian Baptist Southern small town in Georgia," Moretz told The Hollywood Reporter.
She also spoke about being an advocate in terms of the kinds of roles she would choose to play. In 2018, Moretz starred in "The Miseducation of Cameron Post," about a girl who is sent to a conversion therapy camp. "I found that being able to partner my activism with my art was what I wanted to keep doing and make movies that are socially aware and progressive," she said to The Hollywood Reporter.
The effect on the actress since her father's death
In March of 2021, Chloe Grace Moretz's father passed away unexpectedly. The actor had a difficult time processing her grief because her relationship with her father had been complicated. When Moretz was just 12, her father left the family. "It was a pretty bad experience ... It could have rocked our family and messed us up, but it actually made us a lot tighter. My brothers bumped up into the roles of fathers and kept me in a bubble where I could live in a world that wasn't jaded and ruined," Moretz told Glamour in 2016. She added, "I don't think I will truly find a way to forgive; the things that he did are unforgivable."
Moretz's father was a plastic surgeon and was just 64 years old at the time of his passing. The grieving process, though difficult, seems to have helped Moretz grow as a person. "My dad and I had a very tumultuous relationship," she told Hunger. "To say that these past two years have been transformative is an understatement, to say the least. I'm a very different girl than I was. I feel like a woman now."
She keeps her dating life private
As of November 2022, Chloe Grace Moretz is keeping mum about her personal life. And who could really blame her after her very public relationship, and breakup, with Brooklyn Beckham? Moretz and Beckham dated off and on between 2014 and 2018, finally breaking things off after Beckham was photographed kissing Playboy model Lexi Wood. Moretz told The Times, "I'm not a big fan of PDAs in general. I personally don't want to see people posted all over my phone making out." We love the shade.
Since 2018, rumors have been swirling that Moretz is dating model Kate Harrison. Photos of the two looking cute together even popped up here and there, but Moretz has not confirmed anything. However, for fans that would love to see this couple make it official, there may be hope yet. In November 2022, Moretz told i news, "I'm in a long-term relationship. And I really enjoy that."
She is a gamer and she loves cars
For an actor who has been working for most of her entire young life, it's only fair Chloe Grace Moretz gets to partake in some fun, non-industry-related hobbies. One of Moretz's favorite pastimes is gaming. "I love video games. I love first-person shooters, but I also love, like, MMORPG games, so I play a lot of 'Final Fantasy' and getting into 'Destiny,'" she told Wired. Moretz has been playing video games since she was a kid and relished the fact that gaming was something she could finally beat her brothers at. "It was the one time where I could equal the playing field and kick the sh*t out of them a little bit. I got really competitive," she told NME.
Moretz also has a thing for cars, but not the precious vintage variety. "I have a 110 Defender and I have a rooftop tent on it and I take it camping," she mentioned to Wired. And if you're looking for a friend for the end of the world, Moretz is the one. The actor is into "overlanding," which is basically car camping off the grid and into the wilderness. "I like to kit out my car with a bunch of, like doomsday gear," Moretz said.
The film Chloe Grace Moretz most regrets doing
In 2017, Chloe Grace Moretz starred in a movie that she subsequently hoped would never be released. The film in question was "I Love You, Daddy," written and directed by, and co-starring Louis C.K. The film's New York premiere was canceled after five women came forward with sexual assault allegations against C.K. The film's distributor ended up dropping it altogether, and so far, Moretz has gotten her wish. "I think it should just kind of go away, honestly. I don't think it's time for them to have a voice right now," she told The New York Times. The "them" in question are men who commit these egregious acts and seem to just sort of get away with it.
While many actors would be horrified to have a film in which they starred simply disappear into the ether, Moretz stood strong with the #MeToo movement. "I'm just happy to be in communication with everyone and to see the big change in the face of the industry, which I think is very, very real," the actor told W Magazine.
When asked about working with C.K. during an interview with Variety at the 2018 Sundance Film Festival, Moretz shifted the conversation away from her own experience and onto the movement itself. "The fact that it's a conversation and it's a question is monumental," she noted. "We've all been through a lot of stuff but at least we're communicating and people are going to be held accountable."
She's also a trained martial artist
Chloe Grace Moretz, the star of "Kick-Ass," could literally kick your ass. In preparation for her role as Hit-Girl at age 12, the actor learned several different styles of martial arts. She told Conan O'Brien, "I learned a lot of jiu jitsu, I learned some different stuff like Krav Maga, I learned a lot of KGB stuff, like Russian fighting things." She also showed Conan her butterfly knife skills, which were impressive as well.
But Moretz didn't just do the moves for the movie then forget them. In fact, she stuck with martial arts as part of her regular routine and continues to train. She told NME in October 2022 that she'd stopped her training for a couple of years, causing her to lose touch with a part of herself. So, she started her practice again and could feel the positive change. "I've been doing Muay Thai, judo, and mixed martial arts. Judo in particular has really changed my life. I feel a lot more steady and grounded," Moretz said.
She's really into self-care
Chloe Grace Moretz is not only a prolific actress, she is extremely poised, mature, and self-aware. Perhaps her maturity comes from having been in a cutthroat business from such a young age. Luckily, Moretz has learned some valuable things about self-care over the years that help her stay grounded and healthy. For one, physical fitness is very important to her. She shared with Vogue, "When I don't work out, I just am literally not as happy as when I work out. I love the endorphin rush. It's my time to myself. [I do] SoulCycle for solid cardio, and then Y7, which is like hot Bikram yoga but it's vinyasa." The actor also finds solace in the great outdoors, telling Hunger, "My love language is nature."
Moretz is careful about keeping her mind in check as well, remembering to keep it positive. She once shared an Instagram story that featured pages of a book called "Living With Joy: Keys to Personal Power and Spiritual Transformation." Moretz added, "Everyone should take 15 minutes and try this out today," to the post, which featured daily affirmations and tips for changing negative thoughts into positive ones (via Teen Vogue).
Moretz spends so much time not only entertaining us, but using her celebrity to bring attention to issues that affect us all. That she also takes the time for the caring of herself is a testament to what a strong and wise young woman she is. We simply love to see it!