When Jenna Ortega was asked to name a rookie mistake from her earliest days on set, she first said she could not think of one. Then she reconsidered. What surfaced was not a forgotten line or a bad audition, but the way she treated her own basic needs.
The Wednesday star, now 23, told Esquire that as a child performer she sometimes went entire days on set without eating or drinking. She was determined to stay out of everyone’s way, so she would not ask for even a sip of water.
The interview moves beyond that admission. Ortega also talks about the mentor who shaped her understanding of acting, the year in her teens when she nearly quit, and a question about child actor stereotypes she answered in a single sentence.
Those answers continue a conversation Ortega has been having for years about what starting young in the industry actually required of her.
The Admission She Almost Didn’t Make
She initially said she had no rookie mistakes to confess. Then she caught herself.
“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.”
That gratitude went further than she now believes it should have. “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.” She did not name a specific production or time period.
Ortega now sees that instinct to go without some basic needs as the mistake itself. In trying so hard not to inconvenience anyone on set, she neglected to look after herself.
What Drove Her to That Set in the First Place
She decided at age 7 that she wanted to act, and when her parents laughed, that reaction became fuel.
“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,” she said. “The motivation. And I never really stopped, because I’m very stubborn. And then I never questioned it.”
That stubbornness led to early credits including CSI: NY, Richie Rich, Iron Man 3, and Jane the Virgin. She later became widely known for Disney Channel’s Stuck in the Middle, which premiered in 2016, when Ortega was 13.
Actress Dakota Fanning also shaped her sense of what acting could be. “As a young girl, to see a young girl with so much, it felt like wisdom, like she had lived and walked this planet many times before … she kind of taught me what an actor even was when I was a kid,” Ortega said.
The Year She Nearly Walked Away
On Kid Cudi’s Big Bro podcast in April, Ortega revealed that she had seriously considered quitting the industry as a teenager.
“When I was a teenager, I’d gotten off a children’s show, and I didn’t know what I was going to do,” she said. “I had to prove myself and meet all these new casting directors who didn’t know who I was.”
High school was starting at the same time, which made leaving the industry feel like a natural stopping point. Ortega had begun to see her childhood acting years as a chapter she could close rather than a career she had to keep chasing.
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Then she booked Netflix’s You. “We had talked about it for a few months with my team. 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.'”
She Was Asked About Child Actor Stereotypes, and Answered in One Sentence
The answer was candid, and she left it there.
“Is it wrong to say that a lot of them are true? And do with that what you will,” she told Esquire magazine.
In a 2023 interview, Ortega described a habit of apologizing excessively, including stopping mid-audition when she thought she had made a mistake. In 2025, she said some collaborators may not always have acted in her best interest and described being directed about which professional path to take.
Those comments add context to the pressures she has described around starting young. They do not establish which stereotypes she meant in the Esquire interview, and Ortega did not offer a list or an explanation.
Wednesday, Waititi, and What Comes Next
Ortega has also taken on greater creative responsibility on Wednesday, including an executive-producer role.
Netflix renewed the show for a third season before season two had even aired. Her next film is Klara and the Sun, directed by Taika Waititi and based on Nobel Prize-winning author Kazuo Ishiguro’s novel. She has also appeared in Scream, Scream VI, and Beetlejuice Beetlejuice in recent years.
The arc in the Esquire interview runs from a seven-year-old who turned her parents’ laughter into fuel, through a teenager who nearly left the industry, to an adult who identifies not looking after herself as the mistake she almost could not name.
In 2025, Ortega said friendships with former child actors Natalie Portman, Winona Ryder, and Natasha Lyonne had been valuable because they shared an understanding of what she described as “brutal realizations and experiences” that come with starting young.
The interview does not connect those friendships to the food-and-water admission, and neither does she. That boundary matters: Ortega’s account is specific about what she did, why she did it, and what she now considers the mistake.
When you look back on times you ignored your own needs to avoid inconveniencing others, what is something you wish you had asked for?
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