Macarena Achaga Argentinian Actress From Mar del Plata

Early life

Macarena Achaga Figueroa was born on 5 March 1992 in Mar del Plata, Argentina. Her parents are architects, and she is the eldest of the family; her brother Santiago is eight years her junior. She started modelling at the age of 15, and for jobs in Buenos Aires she travelled by bus from Mar del Plata, a trip of up to five hours, every week. She was represented first by Pink Models Management and then by the Multitalent Agency, both in Buenos Aires, and at 18 she moved to the capital to take her modelling further.

Career

Her modelling work included campaigns for Argentine clothing labels, a 2010 television commercial for Marinela cookies, and editorial pages in magazines such as Para Ti, Joy and Cosmopolitan Argentina. As a teenager she also worked briefly in Mexico and France. Later assignments in Mexico included a spring and summer handbag campaign for CLOE, editorials for InStyle Mexico in 2011 and 2013, a breast cancer awareness campaign for Tommy Hilfiger handbags in 2013, a bridal feature in Hola in 2014 and an autumn campaign for Banana Republic in 2015.

Her first television job was co-hosting the Argentine edition of the MTV Latin America programme Los 10+ Pedidos in 2010, which she left in 2011 after being cast in Miss XV.

In June 2011 Achaga was in Mexico City for a workshop at Televisa San Ángel when the producer Pedro Damián noticed her and invited her to audition for Miss XV, a musical series for younger viewers. She was one of eight actresses considered for the antagonist role of Leonora and was confirmed in August 2011. She was the only Argentine in the ensemble, and the job meant a permanent move to Mexico City. The series premiered on Nickelodeon Latin America in April 2012 and was not renewed for a second season.

In 2013 she took the part of Jenny Parra in Gossip Girl: Acapulco, the Mexican adaptation of the American series. To be cast she worked with a speech coach to lose her Argentine accent. The show was cancelled in January 2014. Between those two events, she starred in the short film El Librito Rojo, shot in Guanajuato in two days.

During 2014 she filmed the horror series Páginas Negras in Buenos Aires, appeared in the Peruvian drama Magallanes, and worked in Chile on Sitiados, a historical series set during the Arauco War. From late 2014 to early 2015 she shot the third season of Cumbia Ninja in Bogotá. In October 2015 she travelled to Lima to film El regreso de Lucas, a co-production of Telefe and América Televisión with 60 episodes.

She went back to Mexico City in 2016 for La piloto, which aired in 2017, and in 2017 she was cast in La bella y las bestias. She left La piloto before its second season and her role was recast. In November 2018 she began playing Valentina Carvajal in Amar a muerte. The series centred in part on a relationship between Valentina and another woman, Juliana Valdés, played by Bárbara López, and it was reported to be the first major storyline of that kind on Televisa's prime-time schedule.

Her later credits include Father of the Bride (2022), Travesuras de la niña mala (2022) and La ira de Dios (2022).

In the summer of 2011 Achaga became the sixth and final member of Eme 15, the pop group formed around the cast of Miss XV. The other members were Paulina Goto, Elezar Gómez, Natasha Dupeyrón, Yago Muñoz and Jack Duarte. Their first video, "Wonderland", came out on 4 April 2012. The group broke up after its final concert in Acapulco on 5 January 2014.

Personal life

Achaga has lived in Mexico City since her casting in Miss XV. She became a vegetarian in March 2013. Her relationship with the Mexican actor Sebastián Zurita was confirmed in February 2014 and ended at the close of that year. She met Juanpa Zurita on the set of Luis Miguel: La Serie and confirmed a relationship with him in 2021.