Chloë Grace Moretz refuses to be your typical damsel in distress in ‘If I Stay’

In her brief but prolific Hollywood career, “If I Stay” star Chloë Grace Moretz has played all sorts of characters, from Joseph Gordon-Levitt’s wise-beyond-her-years little sister in “500 Days of Summer,” to a foul-mouthed tween superhero in the “Kick Ass” movies, to a telekinetic teenager in “Carrie,” and more.

But there’s one character the up-and-coming actress has absolutely no interest in playing: the stereotypical damsel in distress.

“I’m not one to play a damsel, I kind of hate that,” Moretz told Yahoo Movies Canada. “The woman who’s always calling on the man to save her - I’ve turned down so many roles because of that. I want to portray characters that young girls can, in some sense, look up to. Even the characters I’ve played who are not people I’d like them to look up to, at least they’re forthright. I don’t have a good time playing someone who I’m not, which is this boring damsel character.”

Moretz's next project "If I Stay" (based on Gayle Forman’s bestselling young adult novel of the same name) follows Mia Hall (Moretz), a gifted young cellist whose life is altered by a terrible car crash. Seriously injured in the accident and left in a coma, Mia has an out-of-body experience while hospitalized and must decide what kind of life she wants to live.

Watch the trailer for "If I Stay":

“What I found interesting about Mia was the fact that she was such a strong woman,” Moretz said. “I really wanted to show an empowered female character that wasn’t like, ‘Oh, I fell in love with this guy so, whatever, I won’t go to Juilliard.’”

Moretz said she saw some of herself in Mia, comparing the character’s devotion to playing the cello to her own passion for acting.

“She’s not just a girl who’s like, ‘Oh, I like love a guy! Oh no, like my family died! But I still love him, so I’m going to come back to life!’” Moretz joked, affecting a faux Valley Girl accent. “At the end of the day, she knows that her first love is the cello. Sure, she loves this guy now in her teenage years, but her first love that she found when she was five years old was that cello - and she’s going to live by it. That’s how I am with acting.”

Like similarly-themed YA material (see: “The Fault in Our Stars,”), “If I Stay” tackles the issues of love and loss from a teenage perspective. Moretz revealed that working on such emotionally-charged film was a challenge at times, but the 17-year-old actress believes it was worthwhile.

“Every day was a hard day, a really tough acting day,” Moretz said. “You know, one day I’m letting my mom die, the next day my brother dies, and then my dad dies. But it was worth it - Mia was worth it. She was worth going to that emotional place for and not many characters are worth that.”

“If I Stay” hits theatres on August 22. Watch a clip from the film: