Interview: Chloe Moretz, actress

• Chloe Moretz with her Let Me In co-star Kodi Smit-McPhee

We might be in a swanky London hotel and this particular teenager has just had her hair and make-up done professionally ("she's lovely - really normal" was the make-up artist's verdict), our chat is timed to the minute and there are numerous people floating around, all part of Moretz's entourage, but still, the girl at the centre of it all is seemingly unaware, or at least unaffected, by the hubbub that surrounds her.

Funny? Check. Smart? Certainly. Self-aware? Amazingly so. Let's be honest, child stars have a bad rep. At worst they're known for their trips to rehab and at best for their supermanaged, slightly disturbing self-promotional style. Chloe Moretz is something else entirely.

Sitting on a huge, overstuffed sofa, nursing a hot chocolate and giggling with her older brother Trevor, 23, who is her acting coach and chaperone, Moretz is well-mannered and unfailingly polite and, it has to be said, disconcertingly self-possessed. If she's nervous, it doesn't show. If she's trying hard, she's mastered the ability to disguise it.

Probably still best known for yelling the "c-word" while sporting a purple wig and brandishing a semi-automatic weapon as the deadly child assassin, Hit-Girl aka Mindy Macready, in Matthew Vaughan's Kick-Ass, Moretz now has another leading role to promote, it couldn't be more different to Hit-Girl apart from one aspect: it yet again relies on Moretz's ability to play a character who is a child and yet has a quality which hints at something far beyond her years.

In Let Me In, a reworking of the Swedish vampire film Let the Right One In, Moretz plays Abby, a 250-year-old vampire in the body of a young girl. Directed by Matt Reeves, it's a movie which is set to upend the vacuous Hollywood franchises that use the romance of the undead to fill multiplexes and drive teenagers wild - you can't imagine spin-off merchandise or endless tabloid speculation about its cast. And there's already a stir about Moretz's performance.

"After seeing this film, you won't want to be a vampire," she says. And she's absolutely right. There's no pasty-faced glamour or "vegetarian" option for the vampire in Let Me In. It's a coming-of age-story focused on the relationship between a bullied 12-year-old boy, Owen (Kodi Smit-McPhee) and Abby (Moretz), the girl who moves into the apartment next door and who has a dark, devastating secret. Tender and troubling, the success of the film is absolutely dependent on having two young actors who can convincingly carry the darker dimension of the drama.

"You kind of have to think of the different aspects of who Abby is," Moretz says, sounding, not for the first time, like someone much older than 13. "You have little girl Abby, you have 250-year-old Abby and you have vampire Abby. And the vampire is more like the devil (trapped inside) the little girl Abby. But at the same time, there's this old soul."

To play Hit-Girl, a crack shot who can manoeuvre her way through an arsenal of weapons, hold her own in hand-to-hand combat and, of course, swear like a sailor, Moretz had six months of martial arts and gymnastic training. She learned how to throw a smoke grenade and a knife - I wonder what skills she picked up on Let Me In?

"Not as much obviously - I wasn't a crazy assassin," she says. "But there was some stuff. I had to learn how to bite people's necks open. Gotta learn that." She grins. "And I had to learn how to walk around without being able to see because my contacts made me completely blind.

"I just drew from what I knew and went with it, my crazy animalistic side, y'know? Hey, why not?"

Reeves asked Moretz to do two things to prepare for filming: firstly, not to watch the Swedish version (not really a problem; Moretz still hasn't seen it. "My mom won't let me," she says sheepishly) and secondly, to come up with her own version of how Abby's life began. And so she did. She wrote a story about a working-class family and a strange uncle who turned out to be a vampire. In Moretz's version, it was Abby's uncle who made her immortal.

Writing stories isn't unusual for 13-year-olds but using them to create a multidimensional and compelling dramatic performance is typically Moretz. She has said that when it came to Hit-Girl she instantly knew that she wanted to play the part, and it was the same with Abby.

"My mom read the script and she gave it to me saying that it was what we had been looking for. I read it and Trevor read it and then we just kinda went with it," she says. "Every film I do, I read the script and if I connect to the character and I know that I can do it well I say yes and we go forward." Moretz's manager-mother, Teri, is obviously a hugely important figure for her daughter, although when I suggest this, she corrects me, telling me that "the whole family" is vital.

"On the business side of the family I guess it's Trevor and my mom," she says. "Trevor because he's my acting coach, producer, manager, brother. And then mom is everything all at once - hair, make-up, mom, everything. It's pretty crazy."

Collective decision-making is notoriously difficult, not least when you're a teenager and the other decision-makers are your older brother and your mum. Is there ever any conflict when it comes to choosing projects?

"No," she smiles. "I guess we all kinda think the same thing. I think the same thing as Trevor's thinking, he thinks the same thing as mom. We all do it in one way. Even if my manager or agent want to do a film and we have a bad feeling about it, we'll be like 'I really don't think it's for us'. It's all one joint answer."

There isn't a trace of uneasiness about Moretz. Every question is fielded with aplomb; more than that, she's perfected the art of making each question seem new to her, taking her time to think, trying to come up with an answer that will be satisfying.

Moretz got interested in acting when Trevor got a place at a performing arts high school. His little sister saw the kind of things he was getting up to, she read his lines and fed him his cues. She liked it. When the family - mum, dad, four brothers and the youngest, Chloe - moved to LA when Chloe was six, she started to get TV work. Since then, the youngest Moretz has increasingly been the centre of what has become a family industry.

She first came to our attention in the remake of The Amityville Horror with Ryan Reynolds, when she was eight years old. She also appeared as the smart-talking sister in (500) Days of Summer as well as having a clutch of TV roles under her belt - appearances in My Name is Earl, Desperate Housewives and as a recurring character on Dirty Sexy Money.

"I like everything - comedy, drama, I'm not old enough to be in a romantic comedy and I know it's crazy but I aspire to do that." She does a goofy laugh. "I do."

And which are her favourite films?

"Breakfast at Tiffany's or Roman Holiday or Funny Face," she says. "I want to be Audrey Hepburn."

Mention the fact that those films were made some 50 years ago and enquire how she came across them, she says that "Marty" asked her to watch them. That's Martin Scorsese. Moretz has just finished filming with him in Paris on his upcoming children's fantasy, The Invention of Hugo Cabret.

"But actually my favourite film, Breakfast at Tiffany's, has been my favourite for a long time," she adds, "ever since you showed me it," she looks at her brother.

It was two or three years ago he confirms, which, of course, is a long time when you're 13.

Trevor explains that they - the family - want to remake the film with Chloe as Holly Golightly in a version that's closer to Capote's novel than the Hepburn version.

"And Gone with the Wind too," his little sister says, sounding excited and suddenly very much like a 13-year-old. "I want to be Scarlett O'Hara.

"What I want to happen is I want my brother Colin to write it, I want my mom to produce it and my brother Trevor to direct it, and I want to act in it."

Moretz has already been working for five years. She's worked in TV and in films, she calls Martin Scorsese "Marty". I wonder if being an actress has lived up to what she thought it would be?

"It's a lot less glamorous than people think," she says. "It's a lot rougher and gruffer. People think that filming a movie must be so romantic and beautiful and I'm like no, you sweat a lot or you're freezing in zero-degree weather in an a-line skirt with no shorts or socks or boots. It's not as glamorous as they think it is but I'm very, very blessed to be able to work in it."

As Moretz speaks it's impossible not to think of Jodie Foster. It's partly that their voices are similar, low and a little crackly, and partly because she's got that startling maturity while still being very much a child. She's girlishly slim and dressed conservatively in a sweater, jeans and flat shoes. Her mum doesn't let her wear high heels. But still, it's clear why she was cast as Abby. If I was looking for a child with something of the old soul about her, I'd choose Moretz too.

But if the usual baggage that accompanies precocity is a sense of the weight of the world resting on little shoulders, or at least a large number of people's expectations and ambitions, happily Moretz seems largely free from that. She can be goofy and a bit overexcited, she gets a fright when her tummy rumbles ("what was that?" she squeals, eyes rolling) and ends all her sentences with "y'know?" like a proper LA teenager.

She's obviously comfortable with adults, confident and secure in herself. In Let Me In, she shares the screen with Kodi Smit-McPhee who is 14, and she's just finished filming with Scorsese and British actor Asa Butterfield, who is 13. I wonder how she found working with people her own age?

"It's cool, yeah," she says, not sounding entirely convinced. "I like actors in general. I feel like they're all the same whether they're adults or kids or whatever. I treat them all the same. With Nicholas Cage I couldn't go to his room and play video games with him but you know." She shrugs.

As far as the actors she looks up to she's unequivocal. Her idol, apart from Hepburn, of course, is Natalie Portman.

"She's very grounded. Even although she's this huge superstar and she's so beautiful and she's an amazing actress," she says. "That's what I want to be, I want to be a normal person and go to college and be smart and be more than just an actor on a screen, y'know."

As for what she might study - history, she reckons. Her brother, Colin, was a history major and she's a "history geek". And maybe at some point she'd quite like to produce movies.

Being asked about her ambitions, unsurprisingly, doesn't faze her at all. She says she does get nervous before the first day of filming and even before press days "but they're good butterflies and if you don't get them then what's the point? If you don't feel that then you don't feel the thrill of acting, the adrenaline rush, the feeling of being on your toes every second."

But surely she felt nervous working with Scorsese?

"I guess you're nervous because he's a legend, but when you meet him he's just like any other guy. He's a very nice guy who genuinely thinks you're a good actor. There's nothing fake, no crazy picture painted in front of your face, it's cut and dry.

"People think that actors are these beautiful beings, that they're not even human. No, they're still human," she shrugs and sips her hot chocolate.

If she's disappointed with what she's found beneath the glamorous surface she doesn't show it. I tell her that I think it's impressive and she takes the compliment with practised ease.

"They make you feel like you're saving a life when you are not at all saving one person's life. You may make someone laugh but in a couple of years they're not going to remember that exact time. They'll remember having someone save their life. You know, it's just a face on a screen."

As for the reason she acts, it's simple. "I do it because I love it, that's how I feel about it," she says. "I do it because it makes me happy. It's no different to aspiring to be a nurse or a firefighter or an astronaut."

Moretz likes to be busy. If she had her way she'd film back-to-back, she says. But still she manages to see her friends almost every weekend. If she's not in LA they talk on iChat. For her 13th birthday Paramount Studios treated her to a private showing of her favourite film.

"They gave me a screening of the original cut of Breakfast at Tiffany's," she says. "All my friends were like 'this is really boring, Chloe' and I was like, it's beautiful, what are you talking about?"

And what about the other bits of teenage life: clothes, mooching around, being moody maybe?

"It's just the same for me," she says, smiling. "I can be a really angsty 13-year-old. I get told off a lot. 'Chloe, don't say that to me', 'If you say that to me one more time you're losing your computer/phone/iPad'," she mimics her mum. "And since I just got the iPad mom's like 'it's just another electronic for you to lose'."

For some reason I can't help feeling that it's good to know she gets to be, well, just like a regular kid.

"There's no difference," she says, sounding curiously like she's reassuring me. "I'm still a 13-year-old little girl."

I guess so.

Let Me In is on general release from Friday.

This article was first published in The Scotsman, 30 October, 2010