Jenna Ortega recalls the "terrifying" elements of her child stardom

“There’s times that I regret it; there’s times that my parents regret it,” Jenna Ortega says about child stardom in a new interview with The New York Times. In it, she acknowledges that “Children aren’t supposed to be working like that” on film sets and how being an actor completely and totally changed the way she grew up. However, “Looking back, I wouldn’t change anything,” she adds. “I don’t believe in that because if anything, I’m incredibly grateful for the lessons that it did teach me.”

Ortega, who got her start on the Disney Channel and Jane The Virgin, offers fascinating insights into being a famous kid. She notes she was lucky to have her mom watching out for her on set, and to have parents that made sure she took school seriously. So in some ways, she had a more positive experience than some of her peers and predecessors. But there are pitfalls to child stardom that are unavoidable. “Did I like being 14 and making a Twitter account because I was supposed to and seeing dirty edited content of me as a child? No. It’s terrifying. It’s corrupt. It’s wrong,” she asserts. She recalls being told she had to have a social media profile to build her image. But the first direct message she ever opened on Twitter at the age of 12 “was an unsolicited photo of a man’s genitals, and that was just the beginning of what was to come.”

“It was disgusting, and it made me feel bad. It made me feel uncomfortable,” she says. “Anyway, that’s why I deleted it, because I couldn’t say anything without seeing something like that. So one day I just woke up, and I thought, Oh, I don’t need this anymore. So I dropped it.”

Ortega is refreshingly clear-eyed about navigating the bizarre world of Hollywood, particularly as a young person. Not being from an industry family, she became “fearful of other people” after encountering the “strange and intense personalities” of stage parents, producers, and various hucksters who never had her best interests at heart. “[And] that’s a hard lesson to learn so young, and especially hard when you have adults or people who should know better addressing you in a way that is potentially harmful to somebody whose brain is still growing and developing,” she says.

There’s a lot that’s “scary” about fame, “And it’s hard to say that because mostly you can’t complain,” Ortega admits. “I wanted this when I was a child. I live such a privileged life. I’m so lucky to do the things that I do. I love my job. I don’t see myself wanting to stop my job. There are certain things that no one can really prepare you for, though, and that kind of attention is one of them.” You can read the full interview here.