"So a lot of the jobs that I was going for growing up would never work out, because I didn’t look [a certain] way."

Ortega admitted to this rejection being "really hard" to deal with, ultimately affecting her self esteem and confidence in her looks.

"I wanted to dye my hair blonde so that I would look like Cinderella," she adds, but decided against the change as she realised that being herself made her a role model.

"I thought, 'I don’t want other young girls to look up at the screen and feel like they have to change their appearance to be deemed beautiful or worthy'," she says.

Ortega received recognition for playing the young Jane in The CW's Jane the Virgin series between 2014 and 2019, going on to star as lead character Harley Diaz in the Disney Channel series Stuck in the Middle during 2016 and 2018.