Actress Chloe Grace Moretz revealed in a recent interview that she felt “infantilized” by “older men” while working as a teen actress in the entertainment industry.
“It was always odd from my first leading role — I was 14 in Carrie — it was always really interesting to see who would be really unhappy with a young woman,” Moretz said during a recent episode of the Reign with Josh Smith podcast.
The 25-year-old star, who has been acting since she was just five years old, went on to say, “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 said. “And if I had real things to bring to the table, a lot of the time it would get shot down. And there were a lot of moments where it wouldn’t and I was treated equally.”
“It was a really wild power struggle and power dynamic of a young girl who had worked for already 10, 11, 12 years, throughout my teenage years, and was the lead of movies, but was still a kid in every sense of the word. And they might have children the same age as me,” she added.
Moretz said that she always felt like she was “trying to figure out” how to “conduct myself in a way that I’ll be respected, so I can be respected on set and given the credit that I felt that I deserved.”
“I’m advocating for female characters of my exact age at the time,” she said. “And 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.”
“It taught me how to propose questions, and in a way, to make the ideas, their ideas,” Moretz laughed. “So then it would come back around and be like, ‘Oh my God, what a novel idea that you have.'”
This is not the first time the actress has lamented being in the entertainment industry. In September, Moretz said she got her “body dysmorphia” over Family Guy memes mocking her.
Moretz was responding to what she called “horrific” Family Guy memes mocking her body, saying they contributed to body dysmorphia. “I basically became a recluse,” she said.
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