Jenna Ortega’s spectacular change: from Disney girl to starring in this Netflix horror film

Let’s imagine a scale. On a saucer, stardom in Hollywood before turning 21, miles of red carpets, tons of awards and the prospect that your luck will only improve with time. In the other one, a life like that of so many others, which includes graduation parties, proms and a couple of liters of punch drunk by the class repeaters. Few would have thought so if they had had to opt for one of the dishes.

Jenna Ortega did not do it but, even so, she looks tenderly at that path that she herself walked away from when she began acting at the age of 10. In an interview conducted during the height of the pandemic, Jenna Ortega admitted that she was not in a position to regret, but she acknowledged that There was “an important part” of life that she had missed. against your will. That part in which the girls spend their last night of youth dancing in a high school gym, decorated with garlands.

To her, The coming of age found her filming her thirty-third title. After that, 11 more would come, and there are still six pending releases on the horizon. In addition to the aforementioned sequel to Bitelchusin which she will reunite with Tim Burton, Jenna Ortega has embarked on a project that may be as interesting, a priori, as it is prone to disaster: a version of Bernarda Alba’s house set in the 21st century and produced by A24, the studios responsible for Everything at once everywhere either Hereditary. But this is just the final part of a journey that started on Facebook more than a decade ago.

Mom, I want to be an artist

Getting an agent is the difficult part. The rest comes alone. So he thought Shia LaBeouf when he pretended to be his own manager to get the attention of one of Hollywood’s most sought-after agents. And it worked. Jenna Ortega wanted to play fair and, through her mother, she uploaded a video to Facebook in which she recited a monologue. She was, at the time, eight years old, and she had been begging her parents for at least two years to take her seriously: I wanted to be an actress.

“At first, my mother thought it was a phase”said Jenna Ortega. Instead, the woman ended up giving up and helped as much as possible to get her daughter into orbit. The magic of the Internet made the video reach an agent and he got Ortega her first audition. As she herself says in the interview, “the rest is history”.

Its debut occurred in an episode of the series Rob, with Rob Schneider, in the role of “girl.” After that, the military service of every novice actor began: CSI: New Yorka tertiary character in iron Man 3 and another in Insidious 2a couple of episodes in Deadtime Storiesfrom Nickelodeon…And, finally, a more respectable number of episodes (7) in, yes, a series of little success like Rake.

A virgin girl and a Disney girl

Two series are responsible for the fact that, today, Jenna Ortega’s name means something: the first of hers is Jane The Virgin, in which he plays the main character during his childhood in three dozen episodes. The second, Between brotherswhich may not be the best Disney has ever produced (not even its subsidiary, Disney Channel), but it is as honest a beginning as any.

In this series, Ortega played the middle sister of the Díaz family and her work earned her a couple of awards: she was candidate three times for the Imagen Award in the category of Best Young Actor for Television and won one of them. Disney instantly knew it had something of value on its hands and roped Jenna Ortega into yet another project: Elena of Valor, where it appears in a chapter. Don’t be surprised that you’ve never heard of this series: it’s only for completists of Jenna Ortega’s filmography. Which, if they do not already exist, there is no doubt that they will end up being legion.

A scary future

Filmings, premieres, promotional interviews and reviews happen. And then, the year 2022 arrives. 365 days in which Jenna Ortega risked her future heads or tails, and won. For starters, she collaborated with Ti West on xa film that begins as a kind of Boogie Nights low-budget to immediately slide into slasher territory. He then appears in the new sequel scream and finally, stars Wednesday.

Although Jenna Ortega occupies almost every shot of the series created by Tim Burton, there is a sequence in which the actress officially presented her credentials as the next Hollywood star. Yes, just the one where Wednesday attends the Nevermore Academy Ball and shows that, like the rest of the students, she is not only capable of going out on the court, but of conquering it. Thus, the girl who missed the end-of-year school dance was finally able to take a few steps to the rhythm of The Cramps to celebrate his interpretive graduation.

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