Jenna Ortega once dressed as a rock for Halloween. Her homemade outfit started with a large block of Styrofoam and some spray paint.
The 24-year-old actress recalled the costume during her Oct. 19 appearance on Late Night With Seth Meyers, where the host had his own history of outfits that needed explaining.
Fans of Wednesday and Beetlejuice Beetlejuice tend to assume Halloween is her favorite holiday, Ortega said. Her enthusiasm for dressing up began long before those roles.
She still hadn’t settled on this year’s costume when Meyers asked about her plans. Choosing a look tends to be a last-minute job, she admitted.
The Rock Had a Label, but Her Invisible Man Look Raised Questions
“And I had a headband, I think, that said ‘rock,’” Ortega told Meyers, according to PEOPLE. She said that without it, she could have spent the day answering questions about what she was supposed to be.
Meyers’ father had once made him a costume resembling a bag of garbage. People kept mistaking it for a pile of leaves, leaving him to conclude that a headband identifying him as trash would have helped.
Ortega’s other Halloween looks have included Björk’s swan dress from the 2001 Academy Awards. For the Invisible Man, she wrapped her face in bandages and borrowed a friend’s hat and trench coat, then went out in Ireland. In pubs, she thought the disguise made it look as though someone was trying to sneak a child inside.
The Chinchillas She Fostered Found a Permanent Home
During her August 2025 visit to the show, Ortega recalled going to an Irish animal sanctuary because she wanted to pet a cow. She instead arranged to foster a mother chinchilla and her two sons, returning with a cage the next day, as Glamour reported at the time.
She cared for the animals while filming the second season of Wednesday. When Meyers asked this month whether she had reunited with them during the third-season shoot, Ortega said somebody else had adopted them, according to TheWrap.
She acknowledged that finding them a permanent home was the point of fostering, even as she admitted feeling jealous. She would have brought them back to the United States, she said, but had to leave Ireland without them.
Ortega remembered reading with one of the chinchillas perched on her shoulder. Her recommendation came with a warning about the noise they made at night, prompting Meyers to abandon his briefly enthusiastic response: “Hold on. Cancel order.”
Her dog, Twigs, did become a permanent companion. In the earlier interview, Ortega recalled seeing a pregnant dog at the sanctuary and later adopting the smallest puppy from the litter. This time, she told Meyers that Twigs has several names because none seems quite right.
Her Latest Film Came With a Dress Made From Steel Rods
At a New York screening of Klara and the Sun on Oct. 19, Ortega wore a custom Elias Matso dress made from steel rods and crystal beads. Enrique Melendez styled the look, and Amy Adams and director Taika Waititi joined her at the event.
“It’s handmade, human-made, a lot of effort,” she told PEOPLE. Matso had shared footage of the design in progress in April, and Ortega said he had been keeping the dress for her.
In Waititi’s adaptation of Kazuo Ishiguro’s novel, Ortega plays Klara, an artificial companion who forms a bond with a teenager named Josie, played by Mia Tharia. Josie and her mother, played by Adams, are coping with loss and a strained relationship, according to Sony Pictures.
Waititi and Dahvi Waller wrote the screenplay. Natasha Lyonne, Steve Buscemi and Aran Murphy also star. The film opens in U.S. theaters Oct. 23.