The 5th Wave Put Chloe Grace Moretz Into 'Anti-Training'

Moretz's new movie is based on the first novel in Rick Yancey's planned trilogy of books about teens facing an alien invasion. But this is a genre Moretz never really pursued.

"I enjoy books that aren't really YA (young adult) in that sense," she says, "so when I read The 5th Wave it's a very un-YA YA book. It deals with bigger problems and bigger emotions than most YA books. My favourite novel in general is Wuthering Heights!"

Chloe Grace Moretz plays the lead role of Cassie Sullivan

Moretz is interested in making movies that are true to her generation. "I really want to see great movies that depict millennials in the right light," she says. "It's nice to make a movie like this, because I, as a millennial, can say that I'm proud of it! I'm proud of the way it depicts women, I'm proud of the way it depicts familial relationships and relationships with boys. I think young audiences will see that. But adult audiences will see that too."

To get ready for the role, she found herself being asked to forget what she had learned about fighting while making the Kick-Ass movies, because her character Cassie needed to look uncomfortable with guns. "This movie was actually anti-training," Moretz laughs. "For a lot of the slow-motion shots of me running, we had to redo them because I looked too coordinated. They had to make me fall and stumble. It was funny."

And she appreciated director J Blakeson's realistic approach to the violence. "This isn't 007," she says. "Guns are depicted in their realistic light, in that they're used in life-or-death situations. I do think we live in a time where we need to be more cognisant of the way we depict weapons and the way we use them. I think this movie does a good job with that. It doesn't make them fun or cute or pretty. It makes them very aggressive. It makes them real. They're used in situations when you have no other way out."

Her next film role couldn't be much more different, squaring off against Zac Efron and Dave Franco in Neighbors 2: Sorority Rising. "No one's really seen me do this amount of comedy," Moretz says. "They've seen me on 30 Rock and in little Funny or Die skits. But I think people are just going to be surprised."

Watch the trailer for The 5th Wave here: