Robert Lopez
Robert Lopez (born February 23, 1975) is an American songwriter for musicals and playwright, best known for co-creating The Book of Mormon and Avenue Q, and for co-writing the songs featured in the Disney computer-animated films Frozen, its sequel Frozen II, and Coco, with his wife Kristen Anderson-Lopez. He is one of only nineteen people who have won an Emmy, a Grammy, an Oscar and a Tony Award, nicknamed by Philip Michael Thomas in 1984 as the "EGOT". He additionally holds the distinctions of being the youngest person to win an EGOT, and winning the awards across the shortest period of time: he won all four in the span of ten years and completed the set at the age of 39. He is also the only person to have won all four awards more than once, having won two Oscars, three Tonys, three Grammys, and four Emmys.[1] With a second set of competitive wins beginning with his June 27, 2010 Emmy and concluding with his March 4, 2018 Academy Award, he has broken his own 'fastest to complete' record, establishing a new fastest EGOT interval at 7 year, 8 months.
This article is about the songwriter of musicals. For other uses, see Robert Lopez (disambiguation).
Robert Lopez
February 23, 1975
Bobby Lopez
Songwriter
playwright
2
4 Emmy Awards (2008, 2010, 2021, 2022)
3 Grammy Awards (2012, 2015)
2 Academy Awards (2014, 2018)
3 Tony Awards (2004, 2011)
Early life[edit]
Robert Lopez was born in Manhattan, to Katherine (Lowe) and Frank Lopez.[2][3] He is partly of Filipino descent through his father (who was born on a ship in the middle of the ocean after departing Manila); his paternal grandfather was Filipino, and his paternal grandmother was of half Filipino and half Scottish-American descent (both originally resided in Manila).[4] His father was director of publications for NYU Langone Medical Center.[2]
Lopez spent much of his childhood in Greenwich Village, except for one year in Massachusetts while his father was working for Clark University.[2] Upon their return to New York City when he was six years old, "it was a fluke" that he started piano lessons at Greenwich House Music School.[2] The apartment they were subletting at the time happened to have a piano; his mother asked if he was interested in taking lessons, and he said yes.[2] At age seven, his parents bought a piano for him,[2] he saw his first Broadway show,[5] and he wrote his first song.[6] At age 11, he wrote his first opening number.[5] At around age 12, he briefly moved away from the piano and tried playing the saxophone, as well as taking courses in musical composition at other music schools.[2]
Lopez went to Hunter College Elementary School and Hunter College High School, and then on to Yale University where he graduated in 1997 with a Bachelor of Arts degree in English (the type of academic degree expressly discussed in the second song of Avenue Q).[2][5] While at Yale, he wrote three plays (of which two were musicals) and was a member of the Yale Spizzwinks a cappella group, and was influenced by professors such as Vincent Scully, John Hollander and Harold Bloom.[7] During his time at Yale, he vaguely hoped to make a living writing musicals and "had no [other] career options"; towards that end, he avoided courses that would prepare him for a career in something more secure like law or medicine.[2][5]