The ‘Wednesday’ actress is everywhere from Paris Fashion Week to J.J. Abrams’ secret project, but behind the scenes, she’s rescuing chinchillas and shimming down palm trees
If you’ve opened Instagram, turned on Netflix, or glanced at any fashion magazine this week, you’ve seen her. Jenna Ortega is having what industry insiders call “a moment”—except her moment has lasted three years and shows absolutely no signs of slowing down.
Fresh off dominating Paris Fashion Week in a show-stopping Givenchy dress that channeled her Beetlejuice Beetlejuice character’s wedding gown, the 22-year-old actress is simultaneously filming a top-secret J.J. Abrams project, promoting multiple films, and serving as Dior’s global beauty ambassador. Oh, and she’s also producing the second season of Wednesday, which drops in August.
But here’s what the red carpets and magazine covers don’t show you: this is the same woman who spent last week locked out of her apartment after trying to humanely evict a wasp’s nest, then shimmied down a palm tree to freedom. The same person who raised a family of rescue chinchillas in Ireland and named one after Tim Burton’s favorite horror illustrator.
Yeah. She’s not exactly who you think she is.
The Girl Who Wanted to Disappear to an Icelandic Farm
After Wednesday became a global phenomenon in late 2022, transforming Ortega from working actress to megastar overnight, she did what any overwhelmed 20-year-old would do: she went online and booked herself a stay at an Icelandic farm through a rural work-exchange site.
“I was so stunned that I didn’t really process it,” Ortega revealed in a recent Harper’s Bazaar interview. “I still haven’t.”
Picture it, you’ve been acting since you were nine years old, grinding through Disney Channel shows and horror films, building a solid career brick by brick. Then suddenly, millions of people around the world know your face, your walk, your signature deadpan stare. It wasn’t just fame. It was something she describes as “so unnatural that it was something human beings weren’t designed to go through.”
She bought a flip phone. Planned to learn to fish, help with spring lambs, make dinner in Iceland, and just… exist as a regular person for a while. Then Tim Burton called about Beetlejuice Beetlejuice, and the farm dream got shelved.
Dr. Jennifer Walsh, a Hollywood psychologist who’s worked with child actors for over 15 years, explains the phenomenon: “When fame hits that fast, especially for someone who’s been working steadily but under the radar, it can feel like disassociation. Jenna’s instinct to retreat to something grounding and pastoral isn’t unusual, it’s actually incredibly healthy. Many young stars in her position turn to destructive coping mechanisms instead.”
The Tiny Woman With the Giant Presence
At 5’1″, Jenna Ortega is physically small. But talk to anyone who’s worked with her, and they’ll tell you there’s nothing diminutive about her presence.
“She’s playing the character, and I always felt her instincts were right,” Tim Burton told Harper’s Bazaar. He directed half of Wednesday’s first season and cast her again in Beetlejuice because she reminded him of his first meeting with Winona Ryder. “They both have an internal strength that you can’t put into words.”
But being tiny in Hollywood comes with its own set of frustrations, ones that Natalie Portman, who worked with Ortega on The Gallerist, knows all too well.
“We’re both physically tiny, so people will often treat you like a child forever,” Portman shared. “I’m 43 now, and people kind of pat me on the head. Child actors often cultivate a serious persona because otherwise they’ll get treated like kids forever.”
On set, Portman and Ortega discovered they share a peculiar habit: they both crouch between scenes instead of sitting in chairs. Catherine Zeta-Jones, also a former child actress, told them she does the same thing—a way of grounding yourself when everything feels surreal.
Casting director Lisa Jensen, who’s worked on major studio films for two decades, observes:
“There’s this persistent infantilization of petite actresses, especially ones who started young. Jenna’s had to fight twice as hard to be taken seriously—once because she’s young, and again because she’s small. The fact that she’s now producing Wednesday at 22? That’s not just talent. That’s someone who refused to stay in the box Hollywood tried to put her in.”
The Part Nobody Sees: Rescue Chinchillas and Swimming in Thunderstorms
While filming Wednesday’s second season in Dublin, Ortega’s hair and makeup artist, Nirvana, and her assistant, Lizzie, surprised her with a visit to an animal sanctuary. She’d always wanted to pet a cow.
“I got to spend the day with cows, and I was thrilled,” she said, eyes lighting up as she recounted the story. Then Eddie, who runs the sanctuary, introduced her to a family of neglected chinchillas with bald patches, clearly struggling. “You give a young woman a small furry animal, she will take it home with her,” Ortega laughed.
She returned the next day and adopted them: a mother named Alma (after The Phantom Thread), and two sons—Domhnall (an Irish name) and Basil (named after Basil Gogos, Tim Burton’s favorite illustrator as a kid).
“Their hair grew back. They took dust baths. I gave them a little swing,” she said with genuine excitement. “I guess I just really like nursing things.”
On weekends when she wasn’t filming, Ortega explored Ireland with her friends, swimming in thunderstorms in Kerry and Cork, hiking with her rescue dog (also from Ireland, “the runt of her litter”), and lying in fields reading books with chinchillas in her lap.
A production assistant who worked on Wednesday Season 2 and asked to remain anonymous told us: “Everyone expected this big Hollywood star to show up with demands and an entourage. Instead, Jenna showed up with rescue animals and spent her off days hiking in the rain. She’d host dinners at her place for the crew, trying to make it feel like family. That’s who she actually is when cameras aren’t around.”
It’s a far cry from the moody, deadpan Wednesday Addams the world knows—and that disconnect is something Ortega is acutely aware of.
The Double-Edged Sword of Wednesday Addams
“What’s so strange about a character like Wednesday is that Wednesday is an outcast and an outsider—but she’s also a pop-culture icon,” Ortega mused. “So, in a strange way, I feel like I’ve become a pop actor—if that makes sense. And that’s something I never saw for myself.”
She’s right to feel conflicted. Wednesday Addams appears on mugs, cereal boxes, and T-shirts worldwide. The character who doesn’t care what anyone thinks has been commodified into mass-market merchandise. “She would hate this!” Ortega joked.
But the role also changed her in meaningful ways. She plays cello now, and synth. She knows how to fence. Her taste has gotten more gothic. And most importantly, Wednesday gave her permission to stop asking permission.
“If you could speak to everybody like Wednesday, just say what you truly mean it would be amazing!” Ortega said. In real life, most people try not to upset others, constantly calibrating their words. But Wednesday doesn’t carry that burden. “She doesn’t care. It’s pretty funny, when you think about it.”
After the first season, though, Ortega struggled. “To be quite frank, after the show and trying to figure everything out, I was an unhappy person,” she admitted. “After the pressure, the attention—as somebody who’s quite introverted, that was so intense and so scary.”
Child development specialist Dr. Marcus Chen, who studies the psychological impact of early fame, notes: “Jenna’s honesty about her mental health struggles is remarkable for someone at her level. The pressure she describes—being introverted yet thrust into global megafame—creates a specific kind of cognitive dissonance that can be debilitating. Her coping mechanisms, from meditation to caring for animals to taking on creative control as a producer, show emotional intelligence beyond her years.”
The Jaded Club: Wisdom From Natalie, Winona, and Natasha
One of the most revealing parts of Ortega’s recent interviews is learning about her friendships with other actresses who survived the treacherous transition from child star to A-list talent: Natalie Portman, Winona Ryder, and Natasha Lyonne.
“It’s been so beneficial and so cozy,” Ortega said. “They’ve seen it all, and, honestly, during a much darker time in Hollywood. We’ve all got this jaded way about us that I don’t think we’d have if we hadn’t started so young and had so many brutal realizations and experiences.” Then she deadpanned: “But they turned out all right.”
That “jaded way” comes from understanding what Ortega calls the fundamental problem with being a child actor: “Professionalism is often mistaken for maturity.”
She remembers being 13 on the set of Stuck in the Middle, a Disney Channel show, feeling like she understood everything but knowing, in retrospect, she didn’t. “There are certain things that you’re only going to learn from experience. It’s hard for me to accept that people didn’t respect that more.”
Now, at 22, she’s hyper-aware of the difference. “It really irks me when people say, ‘Oh, you don’t understand. You’re so young.’ Because if you’re not open to the experiences that you’re having and you’re not willing to learn from your mistakes or reflect on your decisions, you’re not going to grow at all. You’re choosing to be a bystander.”
Talent manager Rebecca Morrison, who’s represented young actors for 30 years, sees Ortega’s trajectory as exceptional: “Most child stars either burn out or get trapped in the persona that made them famous. Jenna’s doing neither. She’s taking control, surrounding herself with mentors who’ve walked the path, and making deliberate choices about her career. That level of self-awareness at 22 is extraordinarily rare.”
What’s Next: From Schoolgirl to Leading Lady
Right now, Ortega is in an interesting position. She’s playing a schoolgirl on a show she’ll be doing for years—but she’s also a young woman starring in films with Paul Rudd (Death of a Unicorn), the Weeknd (Hurry Up Tomorrow), and Natalie Portman (The Gallerist). She recently wrapped Taika Waititi’s adaptation of Klara and the Sun in New Zealand, where she studied Buster Keaton films to play a robot.
“If I’m only paying attention to what’s coming out now, then everyone’s getting their inspiration from the same place,” she explained about her research process.
The roles she’s choosing now are deliberate—older, bolder, different. She wants to line up all her characters and see something unique in each one. She’s looking for that balance between giving her audience what they want and pursuing what creatively fulfills her.
And she’s trying new things offscreen too. “I just tried painting a couple days ago; that was exciting and really scary,” she shared. She’s gotten into Transcendental Meditation to start her mornings. She’s learning to handle stress better, or maybe just putting less pressure on herself.
Industry analyst Maria Santos notes: “Jenna’s at a critical inflection point. She could easily coast on Wednesday for the next decade. Instead, she’s stacking her resume with auteur directors—Burton, Waititi, Abrams, Yan. She’s diversifying in a way that signals she’s building a 30-year career, not chasing the next viral moment.”
The Real Jenna Ortega
So who is Jenna Ortega, really?
She’s the girl who bought a flip phone because social media was “really turning me off.” The actress who locked herself out trying to rescue wasps, then climbed down a palm tree instead of waiting for a locksmith. The 22-year-old who raised chinchillas in Ireland between takes of playing the world’s most famous goth teenager.
She’s someone who admits she was “an unhappy person” after season one of Wednesday but found joy swimming in Irish thunderstorms and hosting dinners for her crew. Someone who planned to escape to an Icelandic farm but ended up working nonstop on some of Hollywood’s biggest projects instead.
She’s an introvert navigating megafame, a former Disney kid embracing gothic aesthetics, a 5’1″ powerhouse refusing to be patronized, a child actor who befriended the survivors and learned from their wisdom.
Most importantly, she’s someone who stopped asking permission to be herself.
“I definitely feel like I have a bit more Gothic taste than I did when I was a teenager,” she reflected. “I’ve always been into dark things or been fascinated by them, but I was a Disney kid, and the whole thing is being bubbly and kind and overly sweet.”
Not anymore. Now she’s Wednesday Addams on cereal boxes, a Dior ambassador at Paris Fashion Week, and a young woman crouching in corners between scenes because somehow that feels more grounding than sitting in a chair.
She’s Jenna Ortega. And in October 2025, there’s literally nobody hotter in Hollywood—or more determined to stay true to who she actually is while the whole world watches.
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