Jenna Ortega on the tools that help combat her anxiety (2024)

Jenna Ortega, our Bazaar Awards issue cover star and 'Breakthrough' winner, has had quite the year. Her flourishing fame – propelled by several high-profile roles including the title character in Tim Burton’s Addams Family reboot Wednesday – sees her in a transformative time, she tells us. So, it’s no surprise that many of the items Ortega keeps in her personal possession are support acts that bolster her confidence.

In our exclusive video, above, the star reveals the backstories of her favourite products and mental health tools, from salves to supplements.

Take “incredible product”, the Elizabeth Arden Eight Hour Cream Skin Protectant. “I was first introduced to this by my hair and make-up artist on Wednesday and Beetlejuice,” she says. “We always started off our day with this,” to buffer the dark lipstick worn while filming, she explains. Now, Ortega has it with her everywhere, and employs it on problem areas of skin such as her cuticles. “I used to have a bit of a picking problem and I feel like that’s really helped,” she reveals.

This speaks to Ortega’s angst, which she details openly. “I have really, really bad anxiety and it feels like it can be debilitating at times,” the actress says, showing something that she feels has helped her “a lot”: ZuvaLabs Saffron Extract supplements gifted by her mother. After a few months of taking them, she’s “a little bit more mindful or relaxed”.

Another tool she uses is journaling, she says, showing her third journal of the year. “I’ve been trying to practice mindfulness,” she explains, “I feel like this helps”. Not that the practice was easy for her at first. “I put a lot of pressure on myself; I felt like things had to be more interesting or had to be more creative and artistic, and fortunately that’s what that’s become accidentally. But only because I allowed myself to fully release and enjoy what I’m writing.”

Back to beauty, she shows her most sentimental item in her bag, a Mason Pearson Pocket Bristle and Nylon Hairbrush. “I think that I have had this for over a decade!” She recalls that she had just started working with hair and make-up artists for the first time “and everyone had these Mason Pearson brushes… and I thought that was the bougee, elevated thing that everyone did”. Then, after talking about it so much her hairstylist gave her one as a wrap gift. “I have used this pretty much every day since.”

When it comes to her hairstyle, she talks about her recent “severe chop” – a wolf cut – which is the shortest her hair’s ever been, she says. The new length, plus layers, left her unsure of how to style it, until she found the R+Co Jenny Cho Velvet Curtain Cotton Touch Texture Balm. “It really is so easy… you just put a little bit in your hand and rub it around and it’s perfect,” she explains.

Make-up wise? “I don’t wear too much outside of work. But it’s also kind of therapeutic for me; I’ll always have some kind of smudgy liner or something that looks lived-in.” She’s keen not to conceal her natural freckles. “I remember I was insecure about them when I was younger,” she shares, and notes that whenever make-up artists try to cover them now she reminds them that “my face is my face, and they’re there for a reason”.

Her signature lipstick is the Dior Rouge Dior Forever lipstick in shade 200 Forever Nude Touch. “It’s a nub at this point!” she says of the bullet – a “very natural shade, very nude” that can be worn sheer, “or you can build it up”. This, plus “a bit of an eyelash curl” can make her feel a bit more presentable (in fact, she's used her lash curlers so much that the brand name has worn off, and she can no longer remember where she got them from). Though, clearly, how she looks is not what beauty means to her. She feels most beautiful, Ortega says, “when I like my own laugh”, telling the tale of how she would lack confidence in it, but how her friends have helped her feel she can be her true self. Clearly, as the proverb goes, 'what soap is to the body, laughter is to the soul'.

Watch our full video interview with Ortega, above.