In a recent interview, Chloe Grace Moretz discusses anxiety and projecting different versions of herself.

Speaking with The Hollywood Reporter last week, the Suspiria actress, 21, discussed dealing with her public persona and who she was in private.

Moretz has had a lengthy career in the spotlight; in fact, her first part was in The Guardian when she was seven years old, in 2004. Even so, she grew “terrified” of walking the red carpet at the age of 19, and she didn’t understand why at first.

She explained, “At one point, I felt carpets and everything were just fun and just silliness, and something shifted one day where I was suddenly terrified of them.”

Her worries disrupted a big aspect of her job: attending red carpet events and being photographed while promoting her movies.

“And I was terrified of photos, and I was terrified of being objectified by people,” she stated. “Just being seen by people freaked me out. And that was brand new for me. That happened at age 19. I was like, ‘Why am I now afraid of everything, where did this anxiety come from?’”

Moretz reasoned that her uneasiness stemmed from the fact that she’s “always played a role” in her career as an actress. She wasn’t able to control her anxieties until she took the opportunity to develop her “own identity within the portrayal of Chlo Grace Moretz.”

Chloë Grace Moretz

“I think becoming an adult is dropping the role and becoming a person,” Moretz said. “It’s not running away from your problems, but dealing with them, and becoming proud of your issues and proud of your identity. And being like, ‘Well, this is who I am and I’m not going to shy away from that and fit into your societal box.’ I don’t have to laugh it off and shut it off if I don’t want to. I’m OK to cry and not be OK with a situation.”

It’s difficult to learn to appreciate your own sentiments in that way, so Moretz deserves credit for figuring it out. If you suffer from anxiety, you’re certainly aware of how tough it is to overcome the sense of not being okay, particularly when it comes to being proud of who you are. It’s unrealistic to expect to be happy all of the time, and as Moretz pointed out, not running away when you’re unhappy is crucial.

Moretz relies on fitness and meditation to deal with her anxieties. She is aware, however, that her hormones have an impact on her anxiety. “For me, I just make an effort to make sure that I give myself 30 minutes a day to walk away,” Moretz said. “That just means shutting a bathroom door and just standing there for a second and focusing on my breathing, and focusing on my brain, and reconnecting to my heart and understanding who I am. That gets rid of the anxiety for me.”

After being handed a push-up bra with silicone inserts to wear while filming a movie, Moretz confessed in August that she considered getting breast implants when she was 16 years old.

The sight of the bra, which was left in her trailer, gave her fear that her chest was too tiny, she told the Sunday Times.

“I was, like: where did these come from?” Moretz reveals. “Those little things were insidious. Even though you can brush them off, you still internalize them. They make you question yourself and think: well, maybe I am unhappy with the size of my breasts.”