Without a doubt, American actress Jenna Ortega became an overnight craze over the worldwide hit Netflix series, “Wednesday”. According to Variety, Jenna Ortega and “Wednesday” are two hot keywords across platforms. According to the Hollywood Reporter, in its opening week, “Wednesday” quickly holds the record for the most watched English-language film on Netflix with a total of 1.19 billion hours viewed.
In the horror series directed by Tim Burton, Ortega played the title role of Wednesday – the oldest daughter of the Addams Family. While the show has sparked interest in familiar faces like Gwendoline Christie, Catherine Zeta-Jones and Christina Ricci, it is Ortega who has received particular praise for her innocent and satirical portrayal. Especially, her exceptional dancing skills were the cherry on top of the cake and caused a fever for a long time.
Ever since “Wednesday” aired, Jenna Ortega has gained a huge amount of following and become the next “it” girl of Hollywood. For those curious about the 20-year-old actress, keep reading for more information on the rising star.
Jenna Ortega was born on September 27, 2002, into a family with 6 children. She’s of Mexican and Puerto Rican descent.
She began acting in movies at a young age, which prevented her from attending her high school prom and graduation. And she regrets that.
She wanted to pursue acting since she was fascinated by Dakota Fanning’s performance in the 2004 movie “Man on Fire”. “I told my mom that I wanted to be the Puerto Rican version of Dakota Fanning,” she recalls.
Jenna’s mother posted a video of her daughter online with the caption: “My little drama queen.” A casting director watched this video and invited Jenna for an audition. After that, the young actress began to act in commercials.
In her first film, “Iron Man 3”, Jenna portrayed the president’s daughter. “They cut my entire scene pretty much,” she says. “But there are 2 seconds where the screen is on me and my mom and my friends screamed in the theater.”
A year later, in 2014, Jenna played the lead role in the television series “Jane the Virgin” at a young age.
In 2016, Jenna landed a lead role in the TV show “Stuck in the Middle” where she played lead role of Harley Diaz, the middle child of seven. Before becoming an actress, Jenna’s family regularly watched Disney Channel shows, and Jenna once said that if her mother allowed her to act, she would also appear on it. Her mom replied, “Oh yes, we’ll see about that.” But it really happened. And in one of the “Stuck in the Middle” episodes, the actress said a few prophetic words. In the film, she tries to arrange a camping trip for her family. But when she learned that her siblings were all busy that day, she said “This is what happens when there are 7 kids, and you’re stuck in the middle. If my family were a week, I would be Wednesday.”
The actress lent her voice to a few animated characters such as “Over the Garden Wall”, “Big City Greens”, and “Elena of Avalor”.
In 2020, Jenna played the role of Ellie in the 2nd season of the popular series “You”. It was the first serious role of her career, and this made her really nervous. “I thought that every day I went to the set, I was going to be fired for something I did wrong.”
A year later, she portrayed the older daughter of Jennifer Garner’s character in “Yes Day”.
Fans of horror movies consider Jenna a scream queen because she’s played in a few movies of this genre: “X”, “Scream 5”, and “The Babysitter: Killer Queen”.
The actress appeared in her video audition for the role in the series “Wednesday” with stage blood and glycerin sweat in her hair and a significant cut on her face since she was filming “X” in New Zealand and had been up for 24 hours. “I got on Zoom and Tim Burton actually laughed. It made me laugh. I thought it was endearing,” the actress recalled.
Knowing that she would be playing alongside Christina Ricci, who portrayed “Wednesday” in the 1991 and 1993 renditions of “The Addams Family”, Jenna Ortega was terrified “She’s a really cool lady. I was fine meeting her, but her performance was flawlessly done, which is another reason it was hard for me to do this job,” Jenna shared.
She used to be a vegetarian, but while filming the series “Wednesday” taking place in Romania, she started eating fish to balance her diet in a foreign country.
When playing “Wednesday” Jenna rarely blinked because of Tim Burton’s recommendation. “I would have to restart a take if I started blinking. It was Romanian winter, and there was all this wind in my face. I learned to blink on other people’s lines.”
In order to play the cello for “Wednesday”, she worked on the cello about 2 months before they started shooting.
The actress has a few movie award nominations, including a Golden Globe for her performance in “Wednesday”.
Jenna is a huge fan of the “Stranger Things” series whose viewing record was recently broken on Wednesday “I follow everyone’s theories about the show, and I cannot get enough of it,” the actress says.
She revealed that she loves reading. In an interview, the actress said that she had read the novel “The Master and Margarita” by Mikhail Bulgakov because it was mentioned in the series “You” which she had a part in.
The actress doesn’t speak about her personal life and doesn’t care about rumors much, “According to the Internet, I dated like 6 guys, but I’ve dated none of them.”
In 2017, Jenna appeared in the music video “Chapstick” for her friend, musician Jacob Sartorius.
In 2020, she had her first book published: a collection of short stories titled, “It’s All Love: Reflections For Your Heart & Soul”.
In December 2022, it was reported that Jenna and Percy Hynes White, who played Xavier Thorpe in “Wednesday”, would reunite in the romantic comedy “Winter Spring Summer or Fall”, where Ortega will also serve as an executive producer.
Jenna wants to become a film director in the future, but she’s currently focused on her acting career.
A few new Ortega-starring films are scheduled for release, including the horror movie “Scream 6”, the thriller “Finestkind”, and the comedy-drama “Miller’s Girl”.