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Topics: Celebrity, Entertainment, Film and TV, Jenna Ortega, News, Paul Rudd
Niamh Shackleton
Topics: Celebrity, Entertainment, Film and TV, Jenna Ortega, News, Paul Rudd
Jenna Ortega might play moody teenager roles ridiculously well, but the actor insists that she's far from like that herself.
Ortega has been in the acting game for some time now, with one of her earliest roles being in 2013 Marvel movie Iron Man 3 as the vice president's daughter.
Fast forward to today and Ortega, 22, has several huge film and TV credits to her name including Scream, You, Miller's Girl, Wednesday, and Beetlejuice Beetlejuice.
Most recently, she starred in Death of Unicorn alongside the likes of Paul Rudd, Will Poulter, Richard E. Grant, and Téa Leoni, which hit theaters in the US on Friday (March 28).
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In it, Ortega plays Ridley, Rudd's on-screen daughter — another grumpy teen to add to the list of sulky characters she's played.
See the trailer here:
While she's become somewhat accustomed to such roles, Ortega insists that she's not actually like that herself.
Speaking to UNILAD about the possibly of taking on different characters than her usual, more melancholy ones, the Golden Globe-nominee said: "I would be so excited to. I'm one of six kids, and I'm the most expressive in my family.
"I'm very bubbly. A lot of my roles growing up were not moody at all."
Ortega went on: "I think right before Wednesday, I did Ellie on You and she's a bit sassy as well. I would love to do things differently, and I've started doing other projects that kind of do that."
The actor went on to tease that she has an upcoming project with Taika Waititi, and another with Natalie Portman.
With Ortega's real personality in mind, she shared that it's actually stopped her from getting some roles in the past.
"I actually had auditioned for Wednesday Addams at one point in my life and didn't get it," she revealed to UNILAD. "So it's not like this was like some natural progression for me."
While Ortega said she has a 'bubbly' personality, she admitted that she appreciates a darker sense of humor — something which drew her to Death of a Unicorn.
"I feel like I appreciate comedies. I appreciate them more when they're darker," the Beetlejuice Beetlejuice star said.
Speaking more specifically about Death of a Unicorn (which has a 78 percent score on Rotten Tomatoes at the time of writing), Ortega continued: "I think I also was able to recognize a lot of layers and notice that a lot of thought, like anything that Alex [Scharfman] does, there was a lot of thought put behind the script, and a lot of love — and the title caught me as well."
The 22-year-old went on to say that she felt like 'the stars were just aligning' when the opportunity to star in the comedy-horror came her way.
Death of Unicorn is now playing in US theaters and hits UK cinemas on April 4.