Karina Arroyave

Karina Arroyave is a Colombian-American actress born on July 16, 1969, in Colombia, who relocated to New York City with her parents at the age of one. She trained at Fiorello H. LaGuardia High School, where she studied acting, and later pursued comedic performance at The Groundlings in Los Angeles.

Arroyave launched her professional career in the late 1980s across both stage and screen. Her stage work began with the title role in Marisol at the Louisville Humana Festival. In November 1988, she made her screen debut in a brief appearance on the vigilante action series The Equalizer, in the episode "Sea of Fire," credited as "Girl #1." She then joined the cast of the CBS daytime soap opera As the World Turns, portraying Bianca Marquez Walsh, the adoptive daughter of Lucinda Walsh (played by Elizabeth Hubbard), a role she held from 1989 to 1994. Her feature film debut came in 1989 with the biographical drama Lean On Me, opposite Morgan Freeman and Beverly Todd.

In 1993, Arroyave made her Broadway debut in Jane Bowles' play In the Summer House at the Vivian Beaumont Theater. That same year, she co-starred opposite Joanne Woodward in the Hallmark Hall of Fame television film Blind Spot and appeared in the theatrical film Falling Down. Additional film credits from the 1990s include The Cowboy Way (1994), Trial by Jury (1994), Dangerous Minds (1995), One Eight Seven (1997), In Too Deep (1999), and Flawless (1999). During this period she also made guest appearances on television series including Law & Order, New York Undercover, The Practice, Brooklyn South, Chicago Hope, Touched by an Angel, and NYPD Blue.

Arroyave continued building her screen profile into the 2000s, appearing in the films Empire (2002) and Crash (2004). From 2001 to 2002, she played Jamey Farrell in the first season of the Fox series 24. Later film work includes Adrift in Manhattan (2007), Adam (2009), Holy Rollers (2010), and Lost Cat Corona (2017). In 2019, she joined the final season of the Netflix comedy-drama Orange Is the New Black as Karla Córdova, a Salvadoran detainee. From 2021 to 2022, Arroyave held a recurring role as Mierce Xiu on the NBC series The Blacklist. In 2023 she appeared in the Hulu miniseries A Murder at the End of the World, and in 2024 co-starred opposite Guillermo Diaz in the thriller film You Can't Stay Here.