Alexa PenaVega

Alexa Ellesse PenaVega, born August 27, 1988, in Miami, Florida, is an American actress whose career has spanned film, television, and Broadway. Born Alexa Vega, she is the daughter of Baruch Vega, a Colombian fashion photographer and former CIA informant, and Gina Rue, a former model. She has six siblings, including actress Makenzie Vega. The family relocated to California when PenaVega was four years old, and she was homeschooled during her teenage years.

PenaVega's screen career began at age eight, when she appeared as young Jo Harding in the 1996 film Twister. She went on to guest-star in television series including ER, Ghost Whisperer, and The Bernie Mac Show, as well as the television film Follow the Stars Home. Her international breakthrough came in 2001 with the role of Carmen Cortez in Spy Kids, a film directed by Robert Rodriguez. Two sequels followed — Spy Kids 2: The Island of Lost Dreams and Spy Kids 3-D: Game Over — during the production of which PenaVega performed the majority of her own stunts. She reprised the role of Carmen Cortez as an adult in the 2011 installment Spy Kids: All the Time in the World. In July 2003, Vanity Fair named her one of the year's hottest teen celebrities.

In 2002, PenaVega appeared on Broadway in the musical Hairspray, playing the role of Penny. In 2004, she completed work on two feature films, Sleepover, in which she played Julie Corky, and State's Evidence. The following year she starred in the Lifetime television film Odd Girl Out as a victim of cyberbullying, and in 2006 she appeared in the made-for-TV film Walkout. Her film Remember the Daze received a limited theatrical release in April 2007, and she subsequently completed work on the musical horror film Repo! The Genetic Opera, released in 2008. That same year, she began filming Helix in Chicago, a project written and directed by Aram Rappaport. She had originally been cast in Robert Rodriguez's 2009 film Shorts but was replaced by Kat Dennings after commitments to filming Broken Hill in Australia made her unavailable.

In 2009, PenaVega starred as the title character Ruby Gallagher in the ABC Family sitcom Ruby & the Rockits, which also featured Patrick and David Cassidy. In 2012, she appeared in The Devil's Carnival, directed by Darren Lynn Bousman and written by Terrance Zdunich, both of whom had previously collaborated with her on Repo! The Genetic Opera; she also contributed two songs to the film's soundtrack. That same year she starred in the independent thriller 2br/1ba alongside Spencer Grammer and Kathryn Morris, appeared in the Lifetime film The Pregnancy Project, voiced the character Christina in the animated series Unsupervised, and played the young heroine in Aerosmith's music video for "Legendary Child." Between 2013 and 2014, her film credits included 23 Blast, Machete Kills, Bounty Killer, Wicked Blood, The Remaining, and The Hunters. In 2015, she appeared in Do You Believe? as Lacey, and that fall competed on the twenty-first season of Dancing with the Stars, paired with professional dancer Mark Ballas. PenaVega and Ballas were eliminated in Week 9, finishing the competition in sixth place. Her husband, Carlos PenaVega, also competed in that season. Beginning in 2016, she starred in a series of Hallmark Channel television films, including Ms. Matched, Destination Wedding, and Christmas Made to Order. In 2019 and 2020, she and her husband co-starred in the Hallmark Movies & Mysteries films Picture Perfect Mysteries: Newlywed and Dead and Picture Perfect Mysteries: Dead over Diamonds.

PenaVega married film producer Sean Covel on October 10, 2010, in Lead, South Dakota, with Robert Rodriguez walking her down the aisle. She announced their divorce on Twitter in July 2012. In late 2012, she began dating actor and singer Carlos Pena Jr., whom she met at a Bible study. The couple became engaged in August 2013 and married on January 4, 2014, in Puerto Vallarta, Mexico, both adopting PenaVega as their shared surname. They have four children — two sons born in December 2016 and June 2019, a daughter born in May 2021, and a daughter who was stillborn in April 2024. As of 2025, the family resides in Nashville, Tennessee, having previously lived in Maui.