Jenna Ortega has revealed the lengths she went to as a child actor to avoid being a burden for fear of derailing her fledgling career while on set.
“I was so grateful and so excited to be there that my game face was on,” the 23-year-old “Wednesday” actress told Esquire in its “How I Got Here” YouTube clip. “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.”
She now allows that “not actually looking after myself” may have been a mistake. The Screen Actors Guild—American Federation of Television and Radio Artists (SAG-AFTRA) has strict rules about how child actors are treated, many of them based on state law.
Ortega knew at age 7 that she wanted to act, and once her parents were done laughing, they became unwavering supporters, she said. By age 9 she had landed her first bit movie part, as the disabled daughter of the late Miguel Ferrer’s vice president Gil Rodriguez in “Iron Man 3.” Her character was missing a foot.
“I had sat on my leg all day at work, and I limped all the way to the car with smiles and tears running down my face,” she told Esquire. “I was just so happy to have been on a movie set. I refused to leave the wheelchair, because if somebody needed me, I wanted to be ready.”
The actress hinted at what it was like “growing up Disney” in a 2025 Harper’s Bazaar sit-down. At 13 she began playing Harley Diaz, the protagonist in Disney Channel’s “Stuck in the Middle,” the 2016-19 series about a middle child of seven kids — all too familiar terrain for Ortega, who’s in the middle of six. She also appeared as the young version of series protagonist Jane Villanueva in “Jane the Virgin” from 2014-2019.
She counts “Richie Rich,” “You” and “Elena of Avalor” among other television credits. On the big screen she’s known for her parts in the “Scream” and “Beetlejuice” movie franchises.