Jenna Ortega talks Johnny Depp dating rumours as Beetlejuice co-star Winona Ryder calls actress ‘younger version of me’
SHE was the hippest movie star of her generation – and now Winona Ryder has hailed Jenna Ortega as the new cool queen of the big screen.
Jenna, who stars with Winona in this summer’s most anticipated movie, Beetlejuice Beetlejuice, is also pals with Taylor Swift and has kissed singer Sabrina Carpenter in a steamy music video.
She cemented her reputation as one of Hollywood’s hottest talents in hit Netflix series Wednesday in 2022.
Both Jenna and Winona were child stars who later became queens of goth chic — and they owe some of their early success to movie director Tim Burton.
So it’s not too surprising that Winona, 52, sees the 21-year-old rising star as a “soulmate” after being blown away by her during filming.
Jenna says they “connected” as she went through a period of becoming much more well-known — just as Stranger Things star Winona did with the first Beetlejuice movie.
Jenna just blows me away, she’s the most incredible, authentic person. I had this sacred bond with her that was insanely magical
Winona Ryder
Winona said: “I felt like I was seeing a younger version of myself — only she’s 100 times cooler.
“I loved what Jenna brought so much. It’s unique.
“She just blows me away.
“She is an incredible person.
“She is one of my favourite people.
“She is the most authentic person.
“Once the conversation started, it never stopped.
“I had this sacred bond with Jenna that was insanely magical. It’s like soulmates almost.”
Winona returns as Lydia Deetz in Beetlejuice Beetlejuice, the sequel to the 1988 horror fantasy classic that first made her a star at just 15.
‘She made me feel beautiful and special’
Jenna plays her rebellious daughter Astrid, who is struggling at school and has a difficult relationship with her parents — just like Lydia did in the first movie.
Michael Keaton, 72, and Catherine O’Hara, 70, reprise their roles from Beetlejuice, while Monica Bellucci, 59, and Justin Theroux, 53, also star.
Yet Winona is not sure they could have made it without Jenna.
She explained: “I loved what Jenna brought to the film as it’s completely unique.
“She is one of my favourite people.
“This movie had to be perfect. And I realised we were waiting for her to be born and grow up.
“She’s like the perfect puzzle piece to add. She completes it.
“I don’t have enough adjectives — she’s such an incredible person to work with, and to know her is to absolutely love her.”
Jenna, who gathered with her co-stars to launch the movie at the Venice Film Festival this week, has also spoken of how she and Winona “connected” after her fame grew as a result of starring in the title role of the hit Netflix spin-off series.
Jenna said on The Interview podcast: “We shot Beetlejuice not that long after Wednesday had come out.
“It was a very transformative period of my life.
“I felt like I had entered somebody else’s life, and I didn’t know how to get back to mine.
“With the success and the attention she received in the Nineties, Winona had experienced that probably to an even greater extent, so she was the first person I connected with on that topic.
“The way Winona and I got along was quite weird.
“It was like we were reading each other’s minds a little bit.
“She just made me feel really, really beautiful and special.”
Between takes, the pair talked for hours over their love of film. Winona, whose relationship with Johnny Depp confirmed her cult status in the early Nineties, said: “I don’t think I’ve ever bonded with someone like I did with Jenna.
“We both have the same almost religious reverence for film.
“We can talk movies for years.”
Quirky director Tim Burton shot both Beetlejuice films and four of the eight episodes of Wednesday.
Winona credits him with launching her Hollywood career — just as he has Jenna’s.
Now some are tipping Jenna to be “the new Winona”.
Her role as creepy little girl Wednesday in Netflix’s Addams Family spin-off has proved to be such a hit with Gen Z streamers that it was watched for SIX BILLION minutes during its first five days — second only to Winona’s huge sci-fi drama Stranger Things.
Wednesday went on to become Netflix’s most popular English-language show of all time.
The second series of the show started filming in Ireland in May and is rumoured to be released on the streaming platform on Boxing Day.
The similarities between Jenna and Winona extend further than just their professional life.
Three decades ago Winona hung out with a who’s who of Hollywood A-listers, while today Jenna counts singers Taylor Swift, Olivia Rodrigo and actresses Selena Gomez and Emma Myers as her friends.
Jenna denied the “craziest” rumour that she dated Winona’s ex Johnny Depp, joking: “I don’t know that person.”
Both actresses were also child stars.
Winona starred in Beetlejuice as a teenager after director Tim cast her as stroppy goth Lydia when she was still at high school in California.
Today Jenna has been described as this generation’s scream queen of gothic horror.
She landed her first major role at just 12 years old when she appeared in US comedy drama series Jane The Virgin.
‘No one anticipated it becoming what it did’
She went on to star in Disney Channel show Stuck In The Middle, where she won an Imagen Award, which honours the achievements of Latin American talent in the entertainment industry.
She then moved into horror as Tara Carpenter in the hit film series Scream.
Jenna also appeared in Sabrina Carpenter’s video for her single Taste — which is a homage to the sixties horror thriller Psycho and Death Becomes Her.
It saw the two women sharing a kiss.
Earlier this week Winona opened up about being sexually harassed in the Nineties.
She told Esquire mag: “I had difficult experiences with a couple of people who were just blatantly sexually harassing me.”
She added: “And then it happened again in my thirties. It wasn’t an assault. But it was incredibly inappropriate. It was wild.”
After Beetlejuice, Winona appeared in cult classic Heathers and starred in Edward Scissorhands alongside then-fiancé Depp in 1990.
She was supposed to play Mary Corleone in the Godfather III the same year before she withdrew from the set with exhaustion.
Depp and Winona split in 1993 and in 2001 she took a four-year career break after she was arrested for shoplifting at the Saks Fifth Avenue department store in LA.
She was sentenced to three years of probation and 480 hours of community services.
But Winona bounced back, going on to appear in critically acclaimed films, including Black Swan in 2010, before she was cast in Stranger Things as Joyce, a single mother whose 12-year-old son Will vanishes.
The 2016 Netflix series has made Winona — who has been in a relationship with fashion designer Scott Mackinlay Hahn since 2011 — a poster girl for a whole new generation.
She said of the show, now filming its final series: “I don’t think any of us anticipated that show becoming what it did.”
And she admits appearing in the Beetlejuice sequel 36 years on is “surreal” — she only learned it was happening just months before filming.
She said: “It will match and exceed expectations.
“It certainly did mine.”