Raquel Castro is an American actress and singer-songwriter.
Background
She is best known for her role in Liv and Maddie as South Salamanca, Liv Rooney"s best friend and the 2004 film Jersey Girl as Gertie Trinké, the daughter of Ollie Trinké (Ben Affleck) and Gertrude Steiney (Jennifer Lopez), the role for which Castro won the Young Artist Award for the Best Performance in a Feature Film - Young Actress Age Ten or Younger. Castro, the fourth of five children, was born on Long Island, New York to a Puerto Rican and Panamanian father, Albee Castro, and Kathleen, an American mother of Italian American and Jewish descent.
Career
She was a contestant in the American version of The Voice. She has two older sisters, an older brother and a younger brother and currently lives in Los Angeles, California to record some new music Raquel was named after her mother"s favorite actress, Raquel Welch.
Acting Castro made her acting debut in an episode of the television series, Third Watch.
She was then cast as the daughter of the Ben Affleck and Jennifer Lopez characters in the 2004 film Jersey Girl, directed by Kevin Smith. She appeared in a 2005 episode of Law & Order: Special Victims Unit entitled "Alien" and in the independent film Little Fugitive.
Castro also appeared in two second-season episodes of Liv & Maddie ("BFF-A-Rooney" and "SPARF-A-Rooney") as Liv"s best friend South. In 2006, she was cast as Nicole in the music video for the Ludacris song "Runaway Love" with Mary J. Blige, where she plays an abused self-conscious girl who runs away.
She later was featured in the 2007 independent film, Tracks of Color.
She has a role in The Ministers (2009), starring John Leguizamo.