Jenna Ortega says she would 'go all day without eating' as a child star
Jenna Ortega has opened up on some of the stigmas attached to being a child star after admitting that she rarely even drank water while working on set.
Still only 23, the American actress has become a staple of our screens since making her first big breakthrough as Wednesday in the popular Netflix series, even if she's not too sure about the schoolgirl outfit she has to wear in her role as Wednesday Addams.
Ortega had also appeared in the Netflix series You and also made a brief cameo in the Marvel films, but fans of a certain age might have first become accustomed to her acting skills on the Disney channel, when she starred in the sitcom Stuck in the Middle as Harley Diaz.
And even back then, she was determined to accomplish her dream of becoming an actor, which sadly led to her making some unnecessary sacrifices while on set.
Advert
Speaking to Esquire, she said: “I really had it going for me as a child ‘cause I can’t think of one mistake I made. Is that a terrible thing to say? 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.”
Although you would expect experienced actors working on set with children to ensure that they were getting everything they needed, it seems as if Ortega didn't want to bother anybody and for her that meant not even asking for essentials such as water.
“I wasn’t asking for a sip of water,” she recalled. “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.”
We've seen a number of former Disney child stars make it big in Hollywood, with the likes of Miley Cyrus, Demi Lovato, Olivia Rodrigo and Sabrina Carpenter all making it big in the world of music after breaking through in various shows on the Disney channel, with Logan and Jake Paul going in a slightly different direction.
When asked for her take on the stigmas surrounding child stars, Ortega quipped, “Is it wrong to say that a lot of them are true? And do with that what you will.”
She was just seven when she announced to her parents that she wanted to become an actor and she explained that a lot of her 'motivation' behind her career came from their initial reaction.
“I was seven years old when I said I wanted to do this,” Ortega said. “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. And I never really stopped, because I’m very stubborn. And then I never questioned it.”
Topics: Jenna Ortega, Celebrity News, Entertainment
James Moorhouse