It’s become a widespread cultural habit to worry about child stars who become famous for being professionally adorable. (These days, the years between the red carpet and rehab are measured in the single digits.) It’s more confounding to contemplate the destiny of child stars who are famous because they are legitimately talented.
I ask Chloë about meeting kids her own age, given that she doesn’t attend classes (a dedicated tutor follows her around the world). “The friends I’ve known the longest are in L.A., of course, but they don’t really care about the business. Though they think it’s cool that they’re able to go to the cinema and watch me onscreen. I only have two friends in the industry, not even really.” In London, a coworker’s daughter hooked her up with her current circle. “Basically, I went to their Halloween party and I met all her friends, and we’re all good friends now,” she explains.
But what about kids who are not in the industry who wish they were in the industry, and see “friendship” with Moretz as a foot in the door? And what about just run-of-the-mill suck-ups?
“I guess it happens with anything,” she says. “If you’re an amazing gymnast, if you’re an amazing ballerina, you’re going to have suck-ups too. If you’re a CEO of a business, you’re going to have suck-ups. If you’re a big journalist”—she deftly gestures at me—“you’re going to have suck-ups. That’s just life, you know.”
And her family, she says, is big on constant reality checks. “I always have perspective shoved in my face by my parents and brothers. They’re like, This could all go away in a second—you know that, right? And I’m like, Okay, I get it. Just let me do it for a second.”
“It’s a bit about balancing the Cinderella effect,” Trevor told me earlier. “Like, she’ll get invited to a Dior thing”—specifically, a reception hosted by the fashion house later that week, two nights before the London premiere of the latest Harry Potter movie, to which she was also invited—“but then she has to be home by nine.”
Chloë was right there when he said that, and she didn’t protest. In the Moretz household—no matter what continent it happens to be on at the moment—the rules are the rules. Including, as it happens, no unauthorized R-rated films. Which excludes not only some of Chloë’s recent work, but much of the oeuvre of a certain director.
