Jenna Ortega is opening up about the pressures she faced growing up in Hollywood, revealing that as a child actor she sometimes went entire days without asking for food or water because she feared being “in the way.”
Ortega, the “Wednesday” star and former Disney Channel actor, told Esquire in an interview posted Tuesday that she learned at a young age to make herself as unobtrusive as possible working on set, a mindset she now recognizes came at the expense of taking care of herself.
“I wasn’t asking for a sip of water,” she said. “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,” she added.
Ortega also reflected on the perfectionism she developed early in her career.
“I really had it going for me as a child ’cause I can’t think of one mistake I made,” she said. “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.”
Part of putting on that “game face” was never asking for anything on set, she said.
Asked about the stereotypes surrounding child stars, Ortega suggested there may be some truth behind them. “Is it wrong to say that a lot of them are true?” she asked. “And do with that what you will.”
Ortega began her career at just 7 years old, after she told her parents she wanted to become an actor.
“My parents laughed at me when I told them that I wanted to do it, and then that was kind of the root of everything. The motivation,” Ortega said. “And I never really stopped, because I’m very stubborn. And then I never questioned it.”
At 13, Ortega landed her breakout role in the Disney Channel series “Stuck in the Middle.” Other notable appearances as a child actor include roles in “Richie Rich” and “Jane the Virgin.” She has since become an international star thanks to the success of the “Wednesday” series on Netflix and film roles in “Beetlejuice Beetlejuice” and the “Scream” franchise.
Ortega’s admission about not eating as a child actor comes in the wake of Ariana Grande’s stepping away from the industry as people expressed concern about her weight.
