Chloë Grace Moretz was only 8 years old when her first movie, the 2005 Ryan Reynolds-starring “The Amityville Horror” remake, opened in theaters. By the time she was 14, she was leading her first major Hollywood production with “Carrie.” Despite basically growing up on film sets, Moretz said older men often “infantilized” her as a teen actor and almost always shot down her ideas.
“It was always odd from my first leading role when I was 14 in ‘Carrie’… it was always really interesting to see who would be really unhappy with a young woman,” Moretz said on the “Reign with Josh Smith” podcast . “At that point, I had already worked for so many years — almost 10 years — 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.”
“The majority of it was older men for sure who would infantilize me,” Moretz continued. “If I had real things to bring to the table, a lot of the time it would get shot down… 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 fuck.”
Moretz said she often engaged in a “power struggle” with these older male figures on set, even though she was just a teenager at the time.
“I think boundaries are super important,” Moretz said about learning from her set experiences. “And part of realizing your boundaries and actually enforcing your boundaries is speaking your truth without blame or judgement to people.”
“Boundaries are a new thing for me. I didn’t grow up with any boundaries,” Moretz added. “I didn’t learn any boundaries in my life and I got hit like a ton of bricks multiple times and I was like, ‘You know what? I think I need to learn this thing called boundaries.’”
Moretz currently stars in Amazon Prime Video’s original series “The Peripheral.”