WHEN Chloe Grace Moretz meets a fan she is not surprised if they ditch the traditional request for an autograph and ask instead for a punch in the face.

What better way, they feel, to pay homage to her character of Hit Girl in Kick-Ass, the successful ordinary-bods-turn-superheroes franchise, based on the comic books by Scotland's Mark Millar, that returns to cinema screens next week.

Understandably, Moretz feels differently. "I don't punch people in the face for fun, although sometimes you want to," she says, laughing.

Moretz reserves her slugging for the screen, where her career is rapidly moving into heavyweight territory. After starring in the Martin Scorsese-directed Hugo and the vampire thriller Let Me In, she has Kick-Ass 2 coming out, a remake of Carrie at the end of the year, and a thriller, The Equalizer, with Denzel Washington, due for release next year. Young as she is at 16, Moretz is shaping up to be a serious Hollywood player.

Kick-Ass 2, directed by Jeff Wadlow, picks up the story three years on from the sleeper hit of 2010. Hit Girl and Kick-Ass (Aaron Taylor-Johnson) still believe in truth, justice and fighting villains such as Red Mist (Christopher Mintz-Plasse), but they are also older now with all the complications - anxious parents, peer pressure - that brings.

When Moretz made the first film she was just 11. Though the movie was a global hit with fans, it attracted criticism because of the violence perpetrated by its young characters, and their equally explosive language. Moretz is now a seasoned veteran of such controversies.

"It's a movie," she says, when we meet in London, "it's fake, I've known this since I was a kid, that's why I was allowed to do the movie. I don't run around and try to kill people and cuss. If anything these roles teach you what not to do." As for swearing in general, "I try not to. I think you look more intelligent when you don't."

In the new movie, Mindy Macready, aka Hit Girl, is 14. Encouraged by her dad to fight crime from an early age, Mindy has missed out on much of her growing up. Not so Moretz. If anything, she says, growing up in Hollywood has given her more opportunities. While her friends can only travel in the summer, she has been able to see the world. "I've been able to live in London for three years, go to Berlin, go to Bora Bora, all these crazy locations. My childhood has been a lot more immense than most."

But what about going to the prom or the mall, and all those other rites of passage for an American teen?

"I went to the prom, I went to the mall, I've done all that stuff." But it has also been fun going to premieres, she adds. "That's my prom night. That's where I get to dress up and be with the people that support me and talk about the stuff I love."

One thing she does have in common with Hit Girl and Mindy is strength. "Not physically but emotionally." For that she credits her close-knit family. Born in Atlanta, Georgia, in 1997, she has four older brothers, all of whom, unknown to them at the time, helped her prep for Hit-Girl, the teen who can back flip and fight martial arts style with the best of them.

"Growing up with four older brothers it's one of those things, you either learn to play or you don't play. So you learn to play football, baseball, and everything else because it's just part of your family. You get roughed up a bit and you learn to fight back. And to not take no for an answer."

She will next be seen in the long-anticipated remake of Carrie, which wrapped shortly before filming began on Kick-Ass 2. "I went from being in pigs' blood every night for two months to having a weekend off and going straight into my purple leather outfit and fighting and doing crazy stuff. "

Moretz is part of a new generation of young actresses, including Jennifer Lawrence (The Hunger Games), Hailee Steinfeld (True Grit) and Mia Wasikowska (Jane Eyre) who appear determined to take control of their careers at a young age and keep it. Moretz agrees that writing, directing and producing, as well as acting, is the only way to go for women in Hollywood today.

"It's looking that way. It's very much still a male driven business." But she is heartened by the growing number of women, such as Donna Langley at Universal and Amy Pascal at Sony, who are now studio bosses, and the example set by actress turned director and producer Jodie Foster.

There are a lot of movies you do where you think they're great because the script is great, the director is great, the actors are great, she says. But then it can go into an editing room and be ruined, or the sound mix can be so horrible it could have been shot on a mobile phone. Being a producer or a writer on a movie brings more control over the finished product.

Stars can still hold sway, though, as can be seen by the post-production comments on Twitter by Jim Carrey, who appears in Kick-Ass 2 as another vigilante superhero, Colonel Stars and Stripes. After the Sandy Hook school shootings in America, Carrey withdrew his support for the film due to its "level of violence".

Jeff Wadlow, the director, appears sanguine about Carrey's re-think though admits he was "shocked" when it happened.

"Here's the thing about Jim Carrey. We love him in his movies because you never know what he is going to do or say, and I'm here to tell you in the real world you never know what he is going to do or say. So I was quite surprised because he loved the first film, he read the script for our film, he was very invested in it. But, you know, Jim is an artist and he's certainly entitled to his opinion and his right to change his mind."

In any event, the main focus of the movie is on the characters played by Taylor-Johnson, Mintz-Plasse and Moretz. The youngest of the three particularly impressed Wadlow.

"She has an emotional maturity that is way beyond her years. When I'm talking to other actors we often talk about things that have gone on in their personal lives because you draw upon those emotions for the scene so that it feels honest and real.

"But when you are talking to a kid who hasn't lived a lot of life, and most of the life they have lived has been as a movie star, it's hard to talk about real experiences. But in a weird way she's like a prodigy in that sense, she just 'gets' it."

For all that, the young woman who is Hit Girl still can't duff up her brothers in a play fight.

"I can try but they are huge, they are all six feet, six feet two, I'm five four. There's only so much I can leverage. There's only so much Chloe."

Kick-Ass opens on August 14