Jenna Ortega, a 22-year-old American actress, is best known for her role in the Netflix TV show “Wednesday,” but has been in the entertainment industry since she was a teenager.
Season 2 of Netflix’s Wednesday is set to premier August 6th.
She has acted both in movies and TV shows, exploring a variety of genres, but is most well known for her horror roles.
Having started her acting career in 2021, Ortega has never looked back, starring in several amazing productions since then.
Jenna Ortega’s upbringing
Ortega was born in 2002 in Palm Desert, California, a city in the Coachella Valley region of Riverside County.
Her father was a former sheriff who now works at a California district attorney’s office, is of Mexican descent, and her mother, who is of Mexican and Puerto Rican descent, works as an emergency room nurse.
Ortega grew up in La Quinta, California and wanted to act from the age of six.
She started as a child actor, most notably on Disney Channel’s Stuck in the Middle, working from the age of 10 until the present day.
Jenna Ortega’s very first movie and TV Show roles
Ortega’s acting debut was in 2012 in the sitcom ‘Rob’, and later made a guest appearance in an episode of CSI: NY.
In 2013, she made her film debut in an uncredited role as the vice president’s daughter in the superhero film Iron Man 3.
In the same year, Ortega appeared in the horror film Insidious: Chapter 2, and would later become a staple of the genre, being nicknamed “Gen Z’s scream queen”.
From 2014 to 2019, Ortega had a recurring role on the comedy television series Jane the Virgin as a younger version of Jane Villanueva, who is portrayed by Gina Rodriguez as an adult.
She would continue to star in more child movies such as The Little Rascals Save the Day and the Netflix sitcom Richie Rich.
However, her big break came in 2016 when she was cast in Disney Channel sitcom Stuck in the Middle as Harley Diaz, an aspiring inventor who is the middle child of the seven siblings.
The actress received three Imagen Award nominations and a win in 2018, showing that she was impressing the industry from a very young age.
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Jenna Ortega – Gen Z’s Scream Queen
In 2018, the Disney child actor broke away from the Mickey Mouse house and landed a role on the second season of the Netflix thriller series You, being cast as Ellie Alves.
This standout performance led Ortega to star in Netflix’s horror film The Babysitter: Killer Queen, which unfortunately received negative critical reviews.
Ortega continued to pursue more serious roles and had a leading role in the high-school drama film The Fallout, starring as a student who is navigating her emotional trauma after a school shooting, which received very positive reviews.
Despite all these great roles, she had her breakout year in 2022, starring in the slasher film Scream (the fifth film in the Scream franchise) as Tara Carpenter.
Scream was a critical and commercial success, becoming the 28th-highest-grossing film of 2022, with Ortega’s performance being highly praised.
The Californian-born actress then starred in the slasher film X alongside Australian actress Mia Goth, which was directed and written by Ti West.
The comedy-horror American Carnage was Ortega’s final film release of 2022.
2022 proved to be the turning point in the former Disney Channel star’s career as she was cast as Wednesday Addams in the Netflix comedy-horror series Wednesday in 2021, calling it a “new chapter” in her career.
Upon Wednesday’s release in November 2022, critics widely praised Ortega’s acting, and Wednesday became one of Netflix’s most-watched shows, receiving over 1 billion viewing hours within a month.
Ortega’s performance as Wednesday Addams received nominations for a Golden Globe Award, Screen Actors Guild Award and the Primetime Emmy Award.
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