Actress Chlöe Grace Moretz has opened up about taking time away from the limelight to reconfigure her career goals, as well as her experience shooting same-sex love scenes for queer indie flick The Miseducation of Cameron Post.
Speaking to The Hollywood Reporter, Moretz explained that her role in Cameron Post came following an extended break from acting.
"About two years ago I took a year and a half off to sit back and reconfigure my career. I’ve been working since I was 5 years old, and so for me, it was really a second to figure out what this next iteration was going to be and how I could really put a fingerprint on my career and activism," Moretz said.
She added: "I wanted to make movies that are socially aware, progressive and still entertaining, exciting, funny and attainable to big audiences, and this film was all those things wrapped into one."
Moretz went on to describe the sex scenes she shared with Coley (played by Quinn Shephard) as "pertinent to the story".
"They really show the depth of the relationship between my character and Coley and how it wasn’t just a fling. It was something that was a very long-term relationship where they’ve been doing this consistently," she explained.
In addition, the young star said the shooting process was sensitively handled.
"[Director Desiree Akhavan] just looked at me and she looked at Quinn and she was like, 'I’m pretty sure you guys can do this. Pretty sure you guys know what you need to do'. The only thing we had to accomplish was to get me to unbutton the cardigan with one hand so that was the only thing we practiced," Moretz said.
"She was like, 'I’m going to make everyone disappear,' and she made every crew member completely disappear, hiding in different areas. It was just me, the other girl and Ashley Connor, our DP.
"That speaks to how Desiree finds so much confidence in the people she casts and she works with, from the top down."
The actress has previously been open about her experience growing up with two gay brothers in a religious town.
“I have two gay brothers. We were raised in a small town in northwest Georgia - [a] very Christian baptist town," Moretz said while promoting Cameron Post earlier this year.
"So when my brothers came out, it was fairly jarring to the community. We were very blessed to have my mother who was very progressive, but nonetheless, they dealt with a lot of self-hate when they came out."
She added: "And they tried to – which is very common in the community that we grew up in – 'pray the gay away' on their own before coming out to the family, which I was unaware of during the time."
