Paula Garcés

Paula Garcés is an American actress and director known for her work across film, television, and comic book media. Born on March 20, 1974, she has established a long-standing career in the entertainment industry through a variety of feature films, recurring television roles, and digital gaming projects.

Garcés was born in Medellín, Colombia, and moved to the East Harlem neighborhood of New York City at a very early age. She later became a naturalized citizen of the United States. In 1992, at eighteen years old, she gave birth to her first child, a daughter. She married entrepreneur and producer Antonio Hernandez in 2002, and the couple welcomed a son in 2013.

Her acting career began in the mid-1990s with a role as Alvina in the 1995 drama film Dangerous Minds alongside Michelle Pfeiffer. Around this time, she also co-starred as Pilar Santos on the television soap opera Guiding Light, as well as appearing in All My Children. In 2002, Garcés starred opposite Jesse Bradford in the Paramount Pictures teen sci-fi adventure film Clockstoppers. She subsequently appeared in the hip-hop comedy Marci X opposite Lisa Kudrow and Damon Wayans, the Revolution Studios comedy feature Man of the House alongside Tommy Lee Jones, and National Lampoon's Pledge This! in 2004.

Garcés achieved widespread recognition for her film role as Maria, the love interest and eventual wife of John Cho's character, in New Line Cinema's comedy Harold & Kumar Go to White Castle in 2004. She reprised the role in its sequels, Harold & Kumar Escape from Guantanamo Bay in 2008 and A Very Harold & Kumar 3D Christmas in 2011. In addition to film, she joined the cast of the television series The Shield and was featured in the music video for the song Imagínate by Wisin & Yandel featuring T-Pain.

Throughout her career, Garcés has performed extensively in television dramas and comedies. She was a regular cast member on the single 2009 season of the ABC drama Defying Gravity, playing documentarian Paula Morales. Her television credits also include a four-episode arc on Law & Order: Special Victims Unit, guest appearances on CSI: Miami, The Sopranos, Oz, Breakout Kings, Devious Maids, and a role as police officer Paula Reyes in Elementary. Additionally, she played Dr. Kelly Hernandez in a recurring capacity on Syfy's Warehouse 13, and portrayed the mother of the character Ruby on the Netflix series On My Block, later reprising the role in its spinoff series Freeridge.

In addition to acting, Garcés expanded into creative production after observing a large Latino presence among comic fans coupled with a low representation of Latino superheroes. She founded Further Lane Productions to release a limited-run comic book featuring the Latina superhero character Aluna. She subsequently partnered with S2 Games to voice and introduce Aluna as a playable hero in the multiplayer online battle arena video game Heroes of Newerth in 2011. She later collaborated with sekretagent Productions and Allegory Media to publish a four-issue Aluna comic book series in 2014, and the character was subsequently adapted into an action RPG video game in 2019.