Jenna Ortega opens up about moment she almost quit acting
Jenna Ortega is a force to be reckoned with.
With a string of standout roles, including Wednesday Addams in Netflix's Wednesday, she’s now instantly recognizable worldwide. But her career wasn't always smooth sailing, which is something the 23-year-old recently revealed.
During an interview on the Big Bro With Kid Cudi podcast on April 8, the actress opened up about the moment she nearly gave up on acting altogether.
Ortega began as a Disney actor, most notably starring as Harley Diaz in the series Stuck in the Middle from 2016 to 2018, but said she was left feeling stuck after the show ended.
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“I didn’t know what else I was gonna do," she said when describing her ambitions.
"I’ve never really considered anything else, more so recently, just out of the sake of curiosity and wanting another life experience."
“When I was a teenager, I’d gotten off of a children’s show, and I didn’t know what I was going to do. I had to prove myself and meet all these new casting directors who didn’t know who I was.”
Continuing, she said: “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] ‘it was a good run’ sort of thing. We had talked about it for a few months with my team.”
But her luck turned when she landed a supporting role in the hit Netflix show, You, in 2019 alongside Penn Badgley.
She recalled: "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'."
Since then, the actress has nabbed a number of acting jobs, including in Scream 5 and 6, Beetlejuice 2, and Wednesday.
During an interview last year, she recalled how one of her first major movie roles was cut.
Ortega was supposed to star opposite Robert Downey Jr. in Iron Man 3, but her role was slashed just before its 2013 release.
“It was one of the first jobs I ever had. They took all my lines out,” she told Entertainment Weekly, adding that her appearance in the film amounted to just 'one leg'.
Ortega first arrived on the scene in Hollywood when she was just nine-years-old, but has previously spoken out against children working in the industry.
Speaking to The New York Times, she said: “Children aren’t supposed to be working like that,” she said. “They are supposed to be climbing trees and drawing, and going to school. Some of those kids’ parents don’t even take school seriously, so I feel really, really fortunate to have had parents who made sure that I hung out with friends, made sure that I went to public school, and wouldn’t allow me to work on a job unless I had straight A’s and was prioritizing my sleep and my schoolwork.”
“Child acting is strange,” Ortega continued.
“I see why my parents felt so hesitant about it, because you’re putting a child in an adult workplace. I think if I had just stayed growing up in Coachella Valley, I would be a completely different person.”
Topics: Jenna Ortega, Netflix, You, Celebrity, Film and TV
Alice Wade