September 2013 By Philip Berk
She’s only sixteen but she’s already worked with the likes Martin Scorsese, Tim Burton, Matt Reeves, Matthew Vaughn, and now Kimberly Peirce.
Her new movie Carrie takes her acting talent to new heights.
But instead of being highfalutin and standoffish (like Jennifer Lawrence) she’s down to earth, loads of fun, and inordinately bright.
Scorned for being self schooled, she may be from a Christian fundamentalist home, but she’s by no means sheltered.
Having four older brothers, the eldest an actor and her mentor, has given her a confidence few girls that age have.
And she’s cute to boot,
At her press conference Chloe Grace Moritz is wearing a Fred Perry striped t-short, a Jonathan Saunders skirt, shoes by Dolce e Gabbana, and a ring from Delfina Deletrez.
Q: So what has been your experience with teenage insensitivity?
A: I guess I haven’t had it as bad as a lot of my friends who go to real school, but in another way, I kind of get on a global scale, from people in social media, some of whom just don’t like my stuff.
Q: Were you familiar with the original movie, and had you read the book?
A: My biggest source material was the book. I read the book four to five times during filming. Everyday during breaks we would tag the pages in the script, the pages in the book, and we would look at what Stephen King wrote, and what Kim Pierce wrote, and really dissect it all, because my biggest goal was to breathe life into Stephen King’s Carrie. That’s what I wanted to do, because he wrote such a beautiful piece of art; it had emotion, it had sci-fi elements, it had the vulnerability and the ostracizing, but at the same time you had this amazing telekinetic side of the story; you don’t usually get all those in a story.
Q: If you had that telekinetic gift, what would you do with it?
A: I would probably just use it for household chores, like cleaning my room, doing my homework. I would just be in the other room or walking the dog or something.
Q: Can you recall the scariest movie you’ve ever seen?
A: Right now, I think I was terrified by Prisoners the most. That movie freaked me out. All through the movie I was like shaking, and when I left the theater with my brother and my mom, I had my hood up, and I wound up looking behind me, and I was like, “I am going to see that Winnebago, that Winnebago is going to be driving up any second.”
Q: Do you always identify with a character in a movie?
A: A little bit, yeah, but definitely with that movie, yeah.
Q: In what way did you identify with Carrie?
A: Even though I hate to admit it, I feel most most out of my zone when I am with teenagers my age, cause I don’t know them, I don’t know the species of teenagers ( she laughs) and it was the same for Carrie, because she never felt safe, she never felt comfortable around teenagers; she was always looking over her shoulder, always confused, as if everything was going over her head, and I think that naiveté is very much like me compared to my friends, who interact with each other on a daily basis in high school. I am a bit more in a cocoon with my family and my tutor that I have had for ten years.
Q: What scares you more, people or ghosts?
A: That’s hard, people are very unpredictable, but with a ghost you can’t see them. So I think I would probably rather see a human, because with a human I can disarm them, or fight back and run away, but with a ghost it’s like you run away and then they are right in front of you, and you can’t escape.
Q: Do you believe in ghosts
A: I have had a lot of paranormal experiences.
Q: Can you talk about one?
A: My mom is going to kill me. Okay, so we were in a haunted hotel in Las Vegas, New Mexico, and it’s actually the same hotel they used in No Country For Old Men, when he’s dragging the shotgun down the hallway. So we showed up and they told us we got the ghost room, and we were kind of freaked out about that. I was terrified, but my mom was making fun of the ghosts, and she was like, ah, it’s not real, like, “Come at me ghosts,” and I told her not to, and then we went to bed, and it happened to four other women of the crew at the exact same time that night. My mother was being held down, and she couldn’t open her eyes, but she heard rushing of wind beside her. I was sleeping next to her on the bed, and I remember looking over to her and trying to wake her up because she wasn’t breathing, and I was like what’s happening? What’s happening? I freaked out a little bit. And then we started quoting scripture and then we left.
Q: Scary… Do you have any fears? What do you fear most in life?
A: Losing my family probably. My biggest fear is waking up one day and they are all gone, Home Alone style.
Q: In the movie Carrie is locked in a closet when she doesn’t behave. How are you punished?
A: I don’t know, I have never been spanked in my entire life, I have never had anything like that. I was always my mom’s little girl, her one little girl in a sea of boys. So I was never really punished; all the boys were, they got the punishments, but I was just the little girl. Right now my main punishment is having my electronics taken away.
Q: By electronics do you mean videogames? Do you play videogames? Do you have a cell phone, an iPad?
A: All of the above. It starts with the cell phone, and then if she finds me on my computer, she takes my computer, and if she finds me on my iPad she takes the iPad, and then I will use her phone, and she’ll take her phone from me (she laughs) And then I will use my brother’s computer, and she will take his computer, and then I will use the internet on my Playstation and she’ll take my Playstation controllers (laughing) so at the end of the day she goes, “Whatever. You can keep it. It’s not worth it, just be nice.”
Q: You’re still into videogames?
A: Oh my gosh yes. I am obsessed with video games.
Q: And your favorite?
A: Probably Call of Duty. I really love Assassin’s Creed, and Dishonored. I did a voice in Dishonored, and it was the coolest thing that I had ever done in my entire career, cause I was able to be in a videogame, and then I played it and it was me. It blew my mind.
Q: What does your room look like and what are your favorites items in your closet?
A: My room, I would liken it to French provincial, I want it to be that, but it might not exactly be that; it’s usually very messy. I have a big corkboard of all my pictures, I do these big collages of pictures, and my favorite thing is to take pictures and print them, and put them on my wall and style them with different notes and stuff. The closet in my bedroom is on my wall, it’s like a built-out closet, so I try to keep it looking pretty. My favorite piece in my closet, oh gosh, this is very hard, I got a huge present from Chanel a year ago, which was a Chanel purse, and it is like my favorite present ever, and my favorite piece in my closet, and I haven’t gone a week without wearing it. I am most obsessed with.
Q: Do you like shopping?
A: Gosh, yeah, but my mom kind of limits me. We will go shopping, but she’ll have to hold me back, cause I’m like, “Mom, I really want these sunglasses,” and she’ll be like “Chloe, you have fifteen pairs of sunglasses, you don’t need sunglasses.” She lets me buy certain pieces, but I am not allowed to go overboard. But I wish I could (she laughs.)
Q: Do you sometimes wish you were a regular teenager?
A: I don’t know, I think the reality of being a normal teenager is waking up at five AM and going to school until four PM, and then doing homework and then getting to bed around one and then starting the day over again, but for me, I feel like I am way luckier, because I not only get my school work done, but I can also do what I love and be happy with what I love and even if it means waiting on set for two hours for a camera to set up; in the scheme of things I am doing something that makes me happy, which allows me to have a career for a very long time, and that’s something you can’t buy, that’s something that you can’t pay for, and I wouldn’t give that up for the world.
Q: Do you have a favorite food?
A: Any Southern food, I am from Georgia, so yeah, fried, fried chicken, fried steak, and then you cover that fried steak in gravy, and then you put that fried gravy steak on a piece of white bread, and you get white rice, and you eat all your nice starch and carbs together with some onions, very healthy, it’s low calorie.
Oh yes, she does have a sense of humor.