Jenna Ortega Says She Would ‘Go All Day’ Without Eating or Drinking on Set as a Child Star
Jenna Ortega Says She Would ‘Go All Day’ Without Eating or Drinking on Set as a Child Star
Becca LongmireWed, August 12, 2026 at 9:51 AM UTC
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Jenna OrtegaCredit: Matt Winkelmeyer/WireImage -
Jenna Ortega has admitted there were times she “would go all day” without eating or drinking on set as a child actor
“I was so grateful and so excited to be there that my game face was on,” the Wednesday star told Esquire when questioned whether she made any rookie mistakes on her first set
“I wanted so badly to not be in the way of anybody ... Maybe that was my mistake, was not actually looking after myself,” Ortega told the outlet
Jenna Ortega is recalling the extreme lengths she would go to in order to impress people on set when she was younger.
While speaking to Esquire in a new interview, the Wednesday star, 23, was questioned what one rookie mistake she made on her first set as a child actor was.
“I really had it going for me as a child ‘cause I can’t think of one mistake I made,” Ortega responded. “Is that a terrible thing to say? I feel like I make mistakes now all the time, but as a child, I was so grateful and so excited to be there that my game face was on.”
She went on, “I wasn’t asking for a sip of water. I would go all day without eating, drinking, whatever, because I wanted so badly to not be in the way of anybody.”
“Maybe that was my mistake, was not actually looking after myself,” Ortega admitted.
The Beetlejuice Beetlejuiceactress first starred in the sitcom Rob when she was 9 years old in 2012, before going on to get roles in films including 2013’s Insidious: Chapter 2 and Iron Man 3.
Her first major recurring TV role was playing the younger version of Gina Rodriguez’s titular character on Jane the Virgin between 2014 to 2019, with her also starring as Harley Diaz in the Disney Channel sitcom Stuck in the Middle between 2016 and 2018.
Jenna Ortega is pictured in December 2014Credit: Paul Redmond/Getty
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During her Esquire interview, Ortega was also asked whether she’d like to set the record straight regarding one stereotype that might not be true when it came to child actors.
“Is it wrong to say that a lot of them are true? And do with that what you will,” she told the outlet.
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Ortega admitted she was just 7 years old when she realized she wanted to act. “My parents laughed at me when I told them that I wanted to do it, and then that kind of was the root of everything. The motivation. And I never really stopped, because I’m very stubborn. And then I never questioned it,” she told the publication.
When it comes to some of her earliest creative influences, Ortega insisted she’d always looked up to fellow child actor, Dakota Fanning.
“As a young girl, to see a young girl with so much, it felt like wisdom, like she had lived and walked this planet many times before … she kind of taught me what an actor even was when I was a kid,” she told the outlet.
Jenna Ortega on ‘Stuck in the Middle’Credit: Mitch Haaseth/Disney Channel via Getty
Ortega — who is next set to star as an artificial best friend in Taika Waititi‘s Klara and the Sun, an adaptation of Kazuo Ishiguro’s bestselling 2021 novel— said earlier this year that she did think about stepping away from acting.
However, she then landed the role of Ellie Alves on Netflix‘s You alongside Penn Badgley‘s Joe Goldberg.
Ortega played the teenager in season 2 of the psychological thriller series, which aired in 2019, marking a foray into more mature roles.
“When I was a teenager, I’d gotten off a children’s show, and I didn’t know what I was going to do,” she said on an April episode of Kid Cudi‘s Big Bro podcast.
“I had to prove myself and meet all these new casting directors who didn’t know who I was,” she added.
Ortega continued, “It just felt like a good time to call it quits if I was going to. I was starting high school, and, ‘It was a good run’ sort of thing. We had talked about it for a few months with my team. And then, I think I booked that show You, and then I went on that set, and I loved it and had the best time. I thought, ‘Yeah, there’s no way I could let this go.’ ”
The star was then cast as titular character Wednesday Addams in Netflix’sWednesday in 2021, with the series being renewed for season 3 in July 2025, before season 2 had even aired.
on People
Source: “AOL Entertainment”
