Chloe Moretz Talks Kick Ass

6 September 2010

Chloe Moretz In Kick Ass

Matthew Vaughn's Kick Ass burst onto the big screen earlier this year to critical acclaim, as well as doing well at the box office; so much so that a sequel is already in the pipeline.

But the movie made a star out of thirteen year old actress Chloe Moretz as she took on the role of the ass kicking foul mouthed super hero Hit Girl.

- The film exceeded my high expectations...

Oh thank you. I put my heart and soul into that character.

- Is it strange making a film that in the UK you wouldn’t be allowed to see?

Well in America I wouldn’t be allowed to see it because my mom and my parents only let me see PG-13 movies. So if I wasn’t in the film, I wouldn’t be allowed to see it.

- How did they say yes to this film for you?

Well my mom reads every script before I even read it. About a month before we even got the script Wanted came out. I was in the car with my mom in LA and a bus drove up and it had Angelina Jolie on the side of the bus and she was looking so cool. I said ‘mom I really want to play an Angelina Jolie superhero-type character’.

And she said ‘Chloe there are no roles out there for kids like that’. Then literally a month later the script for Kick-Ass came out and I was like, ‘mom, can I do it?’ and she said ‘Chloe this is exactly what you’ve been wanting’ because she knew it would be a very challenging, exciting role for me.

I read the script and I was like, ‘oh my gosh! I have to be Hit Girl’. What girl wouldn’t read that script and be like, ‘I want to be Hit Girl?’ So I went out for it with Matthew and when I got the role I was screaming for like two months straight.

- And you had to have a lot of training?

I did a bunch of training about a month before the movie started filming, which was just basic training - ballet, gymnastics, working on my flexibility and conditioning, crazy crunches and stuff.

Once the movie started taking off a little bit more, we did go more in-depth with the choreography and working with the guns, the knives and the bow staff.

- Any martial arts training?

I did. I did a martial art called Wushu with some of the top action choreographers I think in the world. It was Jackie Chan style.

- So you could kick our asses?

[Laughs] Ah-ha. I mean in real life I’m a scaredy cat. I might know how to do it but I’d be terrified.

I’m afraid of spiders and snakes that are this big [makes a small circle with finger and thumb], much less a gigantic reporter.

- If you had a knife or a gun could you still use those?

I could flip the Balisong like I did in the movie, but I’d be kind of afraid to.

- Why does no-one ever think about being a superhero?

Well I don’t know because it’s kind of true, you would be practically killed if you went out in a little suit and you tried to mess with people like that. I don’t think anyone should really do that. If you become a cop you can go do it.

If you become someone who is working for the law and if anyone goes against the law and you’re a cop or you work for the government or something then you can go and try and get them.

But I wouldn’t advise it for anyone that’s not part of the armed forces.

- Did you or your mother ever balk at the violence or language in the film?

Well I knew that it was definitely a breathtaking role and something that could stretch my acting ability and would challenge me.

So when I read the script I knew that I wanted to be Hit Girl. It interested me because no roles come up like that for children.

- What about the curse words? Did your parents object?

In real life of course if I ever said that I’d be grounded for the rest of my life. My parents are very, very strict. And that was just part of the character.

It was part of Mindy Macready and Hit Girl. It wasn’t me. When I put on that mask or I put on the fringe and little pony tails I become Mindy.

- How do you deal with school? You’ve been in the business for quite a while...

Seven years. I’m home schooled but I went to school until third grade. I have all my friends since kindergarten and none of my friends are in the business so when I’m at home we rarely even talk about it.

- Do you sometimes miss a normal teenage life?

I do have a normal teenage life. There’s so much drama in school, my friends say they’d rather be home schooled just because there’s so much drama. I have a pretty awesome teenage life.

I get to hang out with my friends and then I get to go to London. My friends haven’t even been to London.

So they think its cool having a friend that lives in London, not even doing this. They think of me as Chloe on her own, not as an actress.

- Matthew compared you to Natalie Portman and Jodie Foster. What do you think about that?

Well Natalie Portman and Jodie Foster are my idols and I look to them as if they were...I want my career to be just like them. They were able to go to college, they were able to entertain, yet they were able to be smart.

Education comes first in our family for sure. I mean my mom always says that she would take me out of this business if I ever get ahead of myself.

I have four other brothers too, so I think if I ever did do anything like that they would kill me.

- Are you into all the Vampire Diaries and Twilight?

Twilight’s an amazing movie. And Let Me In shows a different side of vampires, a less glamorous, less romantic side of vampires. It shows that being a vampire is a burden; it’s something that she, Abby, has to carry with herself.

It’s not cool to be a vampire. It’s not something that’s beautiful and romantic, it’s something that’s dark and deep and it’s a demon inside of her basically. The whole vampire genre stuff is cool.

One of my favourite movies is Interview with the Vampire and for Hit Girl I borrowed a little bit of Kirsten Dunst from Interview with the Vampire. I collaborated a bunch of different characters in it.

- What’s your take on women in action movies and superhero movies? One of the reasons I loved Kick-Ass was your character. So many women characters are pushed to the sidelines and only play the love interest...

When I read the script, besides thinking it’s an amazing role I knew that it was a role that a little girl could do that would stand up for women.

Because women rarely ever play the leading women, rarely ever are able to do this and be not criticised for it. So that’s why I really wanted to do it and be the sword-wielding, awesome leading girl woman empowerment character. That definitely interested me.

- And Angelina Jolie is your hero?

She’s definitely pretty amazing.

- What did you think of your costume and what was the first day that you wore it?

The first day I tried on the costume it was pretty amazing but I didn’t have a wig. Then I just had little pig tails like Mindy had and so Matthew and I and a bunch of people came up with the idea of putting a wig on me because it was either pig tails or a wig.

And so we decided that it’d be kind of cool to use a wig. We had about 10 or 20 wigs laid out on a character and I was going around trying them on.

There was a blue one, a white one, a bright blue one, a green one and a yellow one but the one I really liked was the purple.

If you look at it, it gives it a sense of uniqueness because a lot of people have a bunch of different type colours in their suit.

But Hit Girl is basically all purple except for a little-bitty pink belt and a little bit of black. That’s why I like Hit Girl, she’s basically a girly-girl.

- There’s kind of a gothic feel to it too...

Yeah, kind of. She’s a little girl playing dress up practically. Playing guns with her is basically like playing dolls.

- Aaron said earlier that you had to go home and practice with the knives...

I did.

- Was that hard to master because that looked quite amazing?

Oh thank you. It’s actually not that hard, you just do this and go back and forth and it looks kind of awesome.

- It’s a real knife?

Well I was training with a practice knife which is basically just a big piece of metal with two little sides and it has holes in it. That’s what I practiced with every day and I brought it home with me.

But when I was on set it was a real knife that was dulled down so I couldn’t have hurt myself with it at all.

- Did you meet Nic Cage before the film to work on your bond?

We only met about once before we started filming. When I first met him I was so nervous, you know, it’s Nicolas Cage! Meeting him is nerve wracking, much less working opposite him.

Actually our first day shooting was the scene where I get shot at the beginning that’s in a sewer.

That was the first time we got to shoot and that was the first day of the whole shoot. So it was like, ‘hi nice to meet you’. Pffftttt! [makes the sound of a gunshot] But that was actually pretty cool, it was a good bonding moment.

- What’s it like to watch yourself get thrown all over the room?

It brings back a lot of memories from when we were shooting it; because it was hard for Mark doing it too. Mark Strong has two kids, he has a wife and he’s a family man he’s literally like a gigantic teddy bear.

Matthew asked him to do a bunch of stuff like kicking me and he was like, ‘no! I can only do this’.

It was fun but that was the only moment in the film where I had to say, ‘can I just walk outside for a moment?’

Because you get yourself in the character of being Mindy and it’s so hard. But it was a lot of fun to shoot.

In Let Me In there’s a scene where I’m getting chased and I’m screaming, ‘mummy help me, mummy help me, mummy help me!’ And I’m crying and then they call cut and I start laughing.

And people think I’m practically crazy because I’m going from crying to laughing like that, but that’s how much I love it.

I’m such an actor that I can fool my dad - I’m like, ‘daddy, can you please buy me this?’ Acting comes in handy sometimes.

- Are you ready to do a sequel if there is one?

If there is one I would love to play Hit Girl again. Definitely.

- And you’ll fight anyone else up for it?

Oh my. Maybe Mindy might but I wouldn’t. I’m always up for fighting for a role, but you know that’s different.

Kick Ass is released in DVD 6th September.