Born and raised in Rome, she was just thirteen years old when chosen for photo stories by the Italian teen magazine Cioè. At the same time, she began taking elocution and acting classes, and shortly before turning 18, she first appeared in Rossella Izzo’s television series Una donna per amico (1998) and Pupi Avati’s film La via degli angeli (1999). Her true debut came in 1999 when she had the lead role in Massimo Martella’s film La prima volta. In that same year, she starred with Carlo Verdone in the film Zora the Vampire (2000), the Manetti Bros’ film debut, in which she played a Roman artist who gets Dracula to fall in love while he is on a trip. After a small role in Carlo Vanzina’s Vacanze di Natale 2000, she had one of the leading roles in Claudio Bigagli’s Commedia sexy (2001). She also experimented with different genres in addition to cinema and in 2004 starred in Max Pezzali’s video clip: Il mondo insieme a te, the eponymous title of the song by the leader of the pop band 883. Over the following years, Micaela worked for a number of television dramas, including R.I.S. 3 – Delitti Imperfetti, Crimini bianchi and L’ultimo padrino acting alongside Michele Placido.

She has received several awards, the most important of which is the award for Best New Actress of the Year at the 63rd Venice International Film Festival for her portrayal of Veronica in Gianluca Maria Tavarelli’s 2006 film Don’t Make Any Plans For Tonight, a series of stories about people in their forties and fifties grappling with their ghosts and unresolved issues of daily life. She was nominated for a David di Donatello award for Your Whole Life Ahead Of You, directed by Paolo Virzì, in which she starred opposite Valerio Mastandrea. She participated in Ce n’è per tutti by Luciano Melchionna (2009). In 2010, she won a Ciak d’oro for Francesca Archibugi’s comedy A Question Of The Heart in which she starred alongside Kim Rossi Stuart and Antonio Albanese, playing the latter’s wife. The film that solidified her career was her second collaboration with Paolo Virzì in The First Beautiful Thing, which earned her, among others, the David di Donatello and the Nastro d’Argento awards as Best Leading Actress, for her portrayal of the cheerful and carefree mother/miss. In 2010 she was back working with Pupi Avati in the film The Big Heart Of Girls, playing Francesca Osti, presented at the Rome International Film Festival. The same character was brought to the small screen by Avati in the series Un matrimonio (2013), where she was joined by Flavio Parenti. In 2012 she starred in A Flat For Three, a comedy directed by Carlo Verdone, in which she played a co-starring role alongside Pierfrancesco Favino, Marco Giallini and Verdone himself. She played the role of a moody cardiologist with sentimental problems, which earned her the Nastro d’Argento award for Best Actress in 2012. She then took on the role of the mother in Daniele Luchetti’s partially autobiographical film Those Happy Years (2013), followed by newcomer Sebastiano Riso’s film Darker than Midnight (2014), winner of the Verdone Award in Lecce, for which she was nominated for a Nastro d’Argento award as Best Supporting Actress. In 2015, she worked with two female directors: Francesca Archibugi, who directed her in An Italian Name and Giorgia Farina, who gave her the entertaining lead role in I Killed Napoléon. She then starred in a quirky friendship role with Valeria Bruni Tedeschi in Virzì’s new film Like Crazy (2016), a touching story of the escape of two disturbed women from a mental facility, presented at the Quinzaine in Cannes, which earned her a Nastro d’Argento and a Ciak d’Oro award. She teamed up with Paola Cortellesi in Cristina Comencini’s comedy Qualcosa di nuovo (2016).   In 2017 she played Elio Germano’s wife in Gianni Amelio’s film Tenderness, based on the novel La tentazione di essere felici by Lorenzo Marone. The following year she portrayed a shy secretary and ghostwriter who finds herself embroiled in a larger-than-life story in Roberto Andò’s Una storia senza nome. In 2019 she was directed by Francesca Archibugi in Vivere and the following year she was among the leads, with Kim Rossi Stuart, Pierfrancesco Favino and Claudio Santamaria, in Gabriele Muccino’s The Best Years, which earned her nominations for the David di Donatello and Nastro d’Argento awards. She appeared in Elisa Amoruso’s Maledetta primavera (2020), presented at the Rome Film Festival, as well as Michele Placido’s Caravaggio’s Shadow the following year. In 2021 she was among the leads in Alessandro Genovesi’s 7 Women And A Murder. In 2022 she played Lea Garofalo in the Disney + The Good Mothers series, which won the “Berlinale Series Award” at the 73rd Berlin Film Festival. Her directorial debut, Felicità was presented at the Venice Film Festival in the Orizzonti Extra section and won the Audience Award. It was released in theaters at the end of September.