Chloë Grace Moretz recalls how older men would "infantilize" her on sets

The ethics of childhood stardom have been a source of constant debate, with accounts like iCarly star Jennette McCurdy’s recent memoir and Nathan Fielder’s The Rehearsal bringing the conversation back to the forefront in recent months. Now, Chloë Grace Moretz—former child actor and still very young industry vet (she’s only 25!)—is speaking out about her own troubling experiences working with much older men on set.

Moretz, who landed her first role at only seven years old, recently spoke out about the power imbalances she experienced leading multiple casts of grown adults as a teenage girl. “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,” she said on the latest episode of the “Reign With Josh Smith” podcast (via IndieWire).

“It was always really interesting to see who would be really unhappy with a young woman,” she continued, before sharing that when she landed her first major leading role in Carrie at 14, “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. If I had real things to bring to the table, a lot of the time it would get shot down.”

Luckily, not all of Moretz’s experiences have been so stress-inducing. In a recent interview with The A.V. Club, Moretz spoke highly of her The Peripheral co-star Jack Raynor, saying that “he’s seriously one of my best friends now, and I really see him as a brother of mine.” She also gushed about working with Martin Scorsese on Hugo when she was only 14, sharing that “he treated us as equals, and he really allowed us to have a conversation and cared about our opinions on the projects that he showed us.”

The Peripheral is currently streaming on Prime Video. New episodes drop every Friday.