Jenna Ortega is opening up about a crossroads in her acting career before landing the role of Ellie Alves in the second season of You.
“I didn’t know what else I was gonna do. I’ve never really considered anything else, more so recently, just out of sake of curiosity and wanting another life experience,” Ortega, 23, said of her ambitions in a Wednesday, April 8, interview on the “Big Bro With Kid Cudi” podcast. “But when I was a teenager, I’d gotten off of a children’s show, and I didn’t know what I was going to do. I had to prove myself and meet all these new casting directors who didn’t know who I was.”
She continued, “It just felt like a good time to call it quits if I was going to. I was starting high school and [it was a] ‘it was a good run’ sort of thing. 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,’” added Ortega, who played Joe Goldberg’s (Penn Badgley) neighbor in You season 2.
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Before her role in You, Ortega starred in Disney Channel’s Stuck in the Middle from 2016 to 2018. The show ran for three seasons and 57 episodes. The actress also had a starring role in Netflix’s 2015 Richie Rich television series.
Since You, Ortega has become a breakout star thanks to her roles in Scream 5 and 6 and Netflix’s Wednesday.
In 2025, the actress recalled how one of her first movie roles was in Iron Man 3 opposite Robert Downey Jr., but her part was cut before the movie’s 2013 release.
“It was one of the first jobs I ever had. They took all my lines out,” she told Entertainment Weekly, noting that the only part of her visible in the film is “one leg.”
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In a 2024 interview with The New York Times, Ortega reflected on working as a child actor in Hollywood after she started pursuing acting at age 9.
“Children aren’t supposed to be working like that,” she said. “They are supposed to be climbing trees and drawing and going to school. Some of those kids’ parents don’t even take school seriously, so I feel really, really fortunate to have had parents who made sure that I hung out with friends, made sure that I went to public school and wouldn’t allow me to work on a job unless I had straight A’s and was prioritizing my sleep and my schoolwork.”
“Child acting is strange,” Ortega continued. “I see why my parents felt so hesitant about it, because you’re putting a child in an adult workplace. I think if I had just stayed growing up in Coachella Valley, I would be a completely different person.”
“I wouldn’t speak the way that I do or approach interactions the way that I do,” she added. “It’s completely changed my way of thinking and going about life, and when I speak to other child actors, I can pick them out instantly because we all have that — it’s just very specific, like some secret little language or something that we all share.”
