Lin-Manuel Miranda
Lin-Manuel Miranda (/mænˈwɛl/; born January 16, 1980)[1] is an American songwriter, actor, singer, filmmaker, rapper and librettist. He created the Broadway musicals In the Heights (2005) and Hamilton (2015), and the soundtracks for the animated films Moana (2016), Vivo, and Encanto (both 2021). He has received numerous accolades including a Pulitzer Prize, three Tony Awards, two Laurence Olivier Awards, two Primetime Emmy Awards, and five Grammy Awards, along with nominations for two Academy Awards. He received the Kennedy Center Honors in 2018.
Lin-Manuel Miranda
January 16, 1980
- Songwriter
- actor
- singer
- filmmaker
- rapper
- librettist
2002–present
2
- Luis A. Miranda Jr. (father)
- Luz Towns-Miranda (mother)
José Miranda (cousin)
Miranda made his Broadway debut in 2008, writing the music and lyrics for and starring in the musical In the Heights, which won the Tony Awards for Best Musical and Best Original Score[2] and the Grammy Award for Best Musical Theater Album.[3] It was later adapted as a 2021 film of the same name.[4] Miranda returned to Broadway in 2015, writing the script, music, and lyrics for as well as starring in the musical Hamilton, which won near-universal acclaim from critics and audiences and became a popular culture phenomenon.[5] Hamilton won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama and was nominated for a record 16 Tony Awards and won 11, including Miranda's first win for the Tony Award for Best Book of a Musical. The Hamilton cast recording spent 10 weeks atop Billboard's Top Rap Albums chart and became the eleventh-biggest album of the 2010s.[6]
A frequent collaborator of the Walt Disney Company, Miranda has written original songs for the studio. He gained two Academy Award for Best Original Song nominations for "How Far I'll Go" and "Dos Oruguitas" from Moana and Encanto, respectively. The song "We Don't Talk About Bruno" from Encanto broke various records and marked Miranda's first number-one song on the US Billboard Hot 100 and the UK Singles charts.[7][8] He starred as Jack in the musical fantasy Mary Poppins Returns (2018), for which he was nominated for a Golden Globe Award for Best Actor – Motion Picture Musical or Comedy. For his performance in the Disney+ live stage recording of Hamilton released in 2020, he received a Golden Globe and Primetime Emmy Award nominations. Miranda debuted as a film director with Tick, Tick...Boom! (2021).[9]
His television work includes recurring roles on The Electric Company (2009–2010) and His Dark Materials (2019–2022). Miranda hosted Saturday Night Live in 2016 and had a guest role on Curb Your Enthusiasm in 2018; he was nominated twice for the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Guest Actor in a Comedy Series. He has been politically active on behalf of Puerto Rico.[10] Miranda met with politicians in 2016 to speak out in favor of debt relief for Puerto Rico[10] and raised funds for rescue efforts and disaster relief after Hurricane Maria in 2017.[11]
Early life and education
Miranda was born on January 16, 1980, in New York City to Luz Towns-Miranda, a clinical psychologist, and Luis Miranda Jr., a political consultant.[1][12] He is of predominately Puerto Rican descent and also has distant Mexican, English, and African American ancestry.[13][14][15] His parents named him "Lin-Manuel" after a poem about the Vietnam War by Puerto Rican writer José Manuel Torres Santiago entitled "Nana roja para mi hijo Lin Manuel" ("Red Lullaby for My Son Lin Manuel").[16][17] Miranda grew up in the Inwood neighborhood of Manhattan and was raised as a Catholic.[1][18][19][20][21] During childhood and his teens, Miranda spent at least one month each year with his grandparents in Vega Alta, Puerto Rico.[22][23] Miranda has one older sister, Luz, who is the Chief Financial Officer of the MirRam Group, a strategic consulting firm in Government and Communications.[24]
Miranda attended Hunter College Elementary School and Hunter College High School.[25] Among his classmates was Chris Hayes, now a journalist. He was Miranda's first director when Miranda starred in a school play, described by Hayes as "a 20-minute musical that featured a maniacal fetal pig in a nightmare that [Miranda] had cut up in biology class".[26] His classmates also included Immortal Technique, a rapper who had bullied Miranda, although the two later became friends.[27][28] Miranda began writing musicals at school.[29]
Miranda wrote the earliest draft of what would become his first Broadway musical, In the Heights, in 1999, during his sophomore year of college at Wesleyan University.[29] After the show was accepted by Wesleyan's student theater company, Second Stage, Miranda added freestyle rap and salsa numbers, and the show was premiered there in 1999.[23] Miranda wrote and directed several other musicals at Wesleyan and acted in many other productions, ranging from musicals to William Shakespeare. He graduated from Wesleyan in 2002.[23][30]