18-Year-Old Chloe Grace Moretz Offers Some Very Sage Life Advice at the Teen Choice Awards

Chloe Grace Moretz takes home the Teen Choice Award for Choice Movie Actress: Drama. Photo: Getty Images

Chloe Grace Moretz scored a Teen Choice Award for Choice Movie Actress: Drama tonight for her performance in If I Stay (as well as Yahoo Style’s Best Dressed Award for her goth Gucci look) and the 18-year-old had some sage advice for her peers.

The actress thanked her fans for their endless support and then offered some words of wisdom in the press room backstage after her win. “It’s hard because I’m still a teenage girl, so it’s hard for me to talk to other teenage girls and telling them how they should feeling or what they should be doing,” Moretz admitted when asked what advice she had for other teens. “But I think my biggest thing is to love yourself and be yourself. Especially in my business and how I’ve grown up, I’ve been pulled in so many different directions and told I need to be this and I need to be that. I need to be skinnier. I need to be blonder. I need to look like this. I need to cry better onscreen. The best advice my mom always tells me is if you’re not happy don’t do it, if you’re happy do it, if it makes you smile and you can wake up in the morning and look yourself in the mirror."

The actress, who mentioned she is currently working on Neighbors 2 with Seth Rogen, gets a lot of good guidance from her mom. Moretz was asked to recount the best and worst things about being a teen and she had a not-so-serious—and then very serious—answer. "The worst thing [about being a teenager] is acne,” the actress laughed. “That’s the worst thing about being a teenager! I still deal with it every day. The best thing about being a teenager is that we don’t have all the weight on our shoulders we’re going to have when we’re older. Be young and be free. I’m learning more about that every day. I take on too much responsibility and I’m like ‘Mom!’ And she’s like 'I told you. Just be a kid. Don’t be too serious while you still can.’"

As for where that giant surfboard trophy is going? "I’m definitely going to head straight to Zuma and ride the waves,” Moretz joked. “No, I can’t surf. I might put it in my house.”

Related: Chloe Grace Moretz Tattooed Her Family’s Initials on her Haunch

Chloë Grace Moretz on Big Screen Teen Romance

An Exclusive Sneak Peek at Chloë Grace Moretz’s Teen Vogue Cover Shoot