Chloë Grace Moretz opened up about suffering from body dysmorphic disorder after a “horrific” “Family Guy” meme of herself went viral, admitting she became a “recluse.”
The “Kick-Ass” star revealed in an interview with Hunger magazine that the “joke” often posted on Twitter forced her to retract from the public eye.
“There was one meme that really affected me, of me walking into a hotel with a pizza box in my hand,” the 25-year-old said.
Moretz explained that “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.”
The photograph was from 2016 and captured the actress carrying two pizza boxes while sporting an outfit consisting of a top, heels and shorts. The paparazzi snapshot was then edited into looking like her midsection was shortened and her legs were overly long. The shot was reminiscent of the “Family Guy” character Legs Go All the Way Up Griffin, so the cartoon from the show and Moretz’s pap shot were mockingly put side-by-side. Thus, a meme was born.
“Everyone was making fun of my body and I brought it up with someone and they were like, ‘Oh, shut the f – – k up, it’s funny,’ ” the “Carrie” actress noted.
But Moretz said while she “actually never really talked about this,” she suffered from body dysmorphia.
“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 said.
“[I] basically became a recluse,” she said, adding that she just went out to do film projects. “To this day, when I see that meme, it’s something very hard for me to overcome.”
The Georgia native also said being left alone felt “great” because she was given the opportunity to “get away from the photographers, and I was able to be myself.”
“[I was able to] have so many experiences that people didn’t photograph,” she said. “But at the same time, it made me severely anxious when I was photographed. My heart rate would rise and I would hyperventilate.”
Moretz added how the offensive photo made her “kind of sad,” as it made her feel uncomfortable going out in public.
“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 said.
The “Brain on Fire” star also said she had lots of therapy stemming from issues related to being in the spotlight.
“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 – – k,” she said.
Moretz also revealed how the coronavirus pandemic and lockdown “aided” in the experience of staying out of the spotlight.
“To say that these past two years have been transformative is an understatement, to say the least,” Moretz said. “I’m a very different girl than I was. I feel like a woman now.”
