lin manuel miranda

If you haven’t heard his name, you live on Mars. He signs fashionable musicals that unleash long lines in front of Broadway theaters, and even Barack Obama when he was president went to see “Hamilton”… twice! Undisputed master of rhymes, he is quoted in television series, he has intervened in several, and his songs have sounded in the cinema in “Moana” and “Star Wars: The Force Awakens”. Who the heck is Lin-Manuel Miranda?

Born in the New York neighborhood of Washington Heights, on January 16, 1980, Lin-Manuel Miranda belongs to a family of Puerto Rican origin, who had been fond of Latin rhythms from Juan Luis Guerra, Rubén Blades or Celia since he was a child. cross . They didn’t have money to go to musicals a lot, but he became fond of them thanks to the cassettes that his mother put in his car. “I remember he played “Les Miserables” a lot. When he listened to it, he thought that I wanted to have the ability to move people like that, make people laugh and cry ”.

While still studying art at Wesleyan University, he began preparing songs for campaign politicians, and composed his first musical, “In the Heights,” which mixed salsa and rap songs, and English with Spanish. He himself played the protagonist, the owner of a grocery store, from his hometown, who faced various problems over the course of three days. He first represented it with the campus company, but then it opened on the off-Broadway circuit with enormous success since 2007. The following year it collected four Tony awards, including best musical and best music.

Become a celebrity, he appeared as a guest star in several series, such as The Sopranos , where he played a bellboy, House , in which he was the protagonist’s bipolar partner in a mental clinic, characterized by ‘rapping’ every minute, Modern Family , as a dog trainer and How I Met Your Mother , where he gave life to a bus passenger. Besides, in a couple of chapters of Larry David he incarnated himself.

Oddly enough, all this is nothing compared to what would come next, when he had a crazy idea, inspired by reading a biography of Ron Chernow, which nevertheless paid off. Everyone will agree that telling the story of Alexander Hamilton, George Washington’s secretary of the treasury, considered one of the founding fathers of the United States, does not seem like the best idea to appeal to the masses.  But what if it’s counted to a rap beat? The result was devastating, you were practically nobody in the country if you had not gone to see “Hamilton”, also starring him, who broke the record with sixteen Tony Award nominations, of which he won eleven, and also won the Theater Pulitzer. It has been ranked by critics as the funniest history class of all time. “It is the first successful story of an immigrant in the United States,” he has said.

Among those who attended the theater was a well-known film and television director and screenwriter, JJ Abrams , who was preparing the premiere of Star Wars: The Force Awakens at the time . Since at the end of the performance she went by his dressing room to tell him that he liked her, Lin-Manuel did not hesitate to joke with him. “If you need music for your movie, let me know.” To his surprise, a few days later he phoned to ask for a Caribbean theme for the scene at Maz Kanata’s club, which was to pay homage to the cantina sequence in Star Wars .

But the conquest of cinema has only begun for Lin-Manuel Miranda. Passionate about Walt Disney movies since he was a child, he was moved when the factory turned to him to compose songs for the animated film Moana , even appearing at the Oscars singing one of them, “How Far I’ll Go”. , nominated for the award. “The crab Sebastián, from The Little Mermaid , who was a composer, changed my life . He made a living with music, and he would sing a song with a Caribbean rhythm, ”he recalls. Shortly after, the company offered her to star in Mary Poppins Returns  alongside Emily Blunt , who has inherited the legendary nanny already played by Julie Andrews .. It is up to him to give life to Jack, a lamplighter who as a child was a disciple of the chimney sweep Bert, the famous character from Dick Van Dyke .

Regarding his private life, Lin-Manuel married Vanessa Nadal, a friend from high school, in 2010. For now, the couple has a son, named – not by chance – Sebastian, who was born in November 2014.