Chloë Grace Moretz said a hurtful viral meme comparing her to a Family Guy character exacerbated her body dysmorphia. The meme and other “horrific” images making fun of her body led to her becoming a “recluse” for some time. Moretz, 25, recently filmed The Peripheral, a new Amazon Prime Video sci-fi series that will debut on Oct. 21.
In a new Hunger Magazine interview, the Hugo star said she felt “really raw and vulnerable and open” when “the Chloë that people see and the Chloë that I am in private” came together. Then, she suddenly saw an “onslaught of horrific memes” that were sent to her about her body.
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“I’ve actually never really talked about this, but there was one meme that really affected me, of me walking into a hotel with a pizza box in my hand,” Moretz explained. “And this photo got manipulated into a character from Family Guy with the long legs and the short torso, and it was one of the most widespread memes at the time.”
Every time she brought this up with someone, they would tell her to shrug it off and ignore the impact the memes had on her. “I just remember sitting there and thinking, my body is being used as a joke and it’s something that I can’t change about who I am, and it is being posted all over Instagram,” she told Hunger. “It was something so benign as walking into a hotel with leftovers. And to this day, when I see that meme, it’s something very hard for me to overcome.”
The memes took away one part of fame Metz loved. “It took a layer of something that I used to enjoy, which was getting dressed up and going to a carpet and taking a photo, and made me super self-conscious,” she explained. “And I think that body dysmorphia – which we all deal with in this world – is extrapolated by the issues of social media. It’s a headf—.”
She dealt with this by becoming a “recluse” for a time. Moretz stayed away from photographers and could be herself. She had “many experiences that people didn’t photograph,” but she was also “severely anxious” whenever she was photographed. “My heart rate would rise and I would hyperventilate,” the Tom & Jerry star said.
Moretz was last seen in the Hulu movie Mother/Android, which was released in December 2021. Her next movie is Netflix’s animated movie Nimona, which will be released in 2023. The Peripheral is her first major television project since she appeared on 30 Rock in 2013. It is based on William Gibson’s novel and includes Westworld creators Jonathan Nolan and Lisa Joy as executive producers. “To say that these past two years have been transformative is an understatement, to say the least,” Moretz, whose father died last year, told Hunger. “I’m a very different girl than I was. I feel like a woman now.”
