Lin-Manuel Miranda was born on January 16, 1980, in New York City, the son of Luz Towns-Miranda, a clinical psychologist, and Luis Miranda Jr., a political consultant. His heritage is predominantly Puerto Rican, with more distant traces of Mexican, English, and African American ancestry. The name Lin-Manuel was drawn from a poem by Puerto Rican writer José Manuel Torres Santiago titled "Nana roja para mi hijo Lin Manuel," or "Red Lullaby for My Son Lin Manuel," a poem about the Vietnam War. It was a literary name for a boy who would grow up to reshape American theater through the power of storytelling.
Miranda grew up in the Inwood neighborhood of upper Manhattan and was raised Catholic. Each year during childhood and adolescence he spent at least a month with his grandparents in Vega Alta, Puerto Rico, developing a deep connection to the island that would shape his creative work and his activism for decades. He attended Hunter College Elementary School and Hunter College High School, where his classmates included future journalist Chris Hayes, who directed Miranda in a school production that Hayes later described as "a 20-minute musical that featured a maniacal fetal pig in a nightmare" from a biology class. Another classmate was the rapper known as Immortal Technique, who had bullied Miranda in school, though the two eventually became friends.
Miranda began writing musicals while still a student. During his sophomore year at Wesleyan University in 1999, he wrote the earliest draft of what would become In the Heights, a work that drew on the rhythms, struggles, and vitality of the Washington Heights neighborhood in Manhattan. After years of development and Off-Broadway performances, In the Heights opened on Broadway in 2008, with Miranda writing the music and lyrics and starring in the production. The show won the Tony Award for Best Musical and Best Original Score and the Grammy Award for Best Musical Theater Album. A film adaptation followed in 2021.
The project that would make Miranda a household name worldwide arrived in 2015, when Hamilton opened on Broadway. Miranda wrote the script, music, and lyrics, and starred in the title role as Alexander Hamilton, one of the founding fathers of the United States. The musical was extraordinary for its approach: it used hip-hop, R&B, and other contemporary musical forms to tell the story of the nation's early years, and cast actors of color in the roles of historical white figures. Critics were overwhelmingly enthusiastic, and the show became a cultural phenomenon that reached far beyond the usual boundaries of Broadway. Hamilton was nominated for a record 16 Tony Awards and won 11, including Miranda's first Tony win for Best Book of a Musical. It also won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama. The cast recording spent 10 weeks at the top of Billboard's Top Rap Albums chart and became the eleventh-biggest album of the entire decade.
Miranda's creative relationship with the Walt Disney Company extended his reach into a global audience that would never attend a Broadway show. He wrote original songs for the animated films Moana, Vivo, and Encanto. The song "How Far I'll Go" from Moana earned him an Academy Award nomination. The Encanto song "We Don't Talk About Bruno" broke records, becoming Miranda's first number-one song on the US Billboard Hot 100 and the UK Singles charts, reaching audiences who had no connection to musical theater. His Encanto contribution "Dos Oruguitas" earned him a second Oscar nomination.
In addition to his work as a songwriter and librettist, Miranda has maintained a parallel career as a performer. He starred as Jack in the musical fantasy film Mary Poppins Returns in 2018, earning a Golden Globe nomination for the role. He made his debut as a film director with the biographical musical drama Tick, Tick... Boom!, released in 2021. On television, he appeared in recurring roles on The Electric Company and His Dark Materials. He hosted Saturday Night Live in 2016.
Miranda received the Kennedy Center Honor in 2018, one of the most prestigious recognitions in American arts and culture. He has also been politically active, particularly on behalf of Puerto Rico. In 2016 he met with politicians in Washington to advocate for debt relief for the island. After Hurricane Maria devastated Puerto Rico in 2017, Miranda organized fundraising efforts and worked to draw sustained attention to the humanitarian situation on the island, using his platform and his voice in ways that connected the personal and the political throughout his career.
