Lin-Manuel Miranda

Lin-Manuel Miranda is an American composer, lyricist, playwright, singer, and actor, known for creating and starring in the Broadway musicals In the Heights and Hamilton. He wrote some parts of the soundtrack of the Disney movie “Moana” and played in the film “Mary Poppins Returns” with Emily Blunt.

Lin-Manuel Miranda is Puerto-Rican/American but he was born at January 16^th 1980 in New York City in the neighborhood of  Inwood. Miranda has one older sister, Luz. As a child, Miranda wrote jingles and music at his free time. He attended Hunter College Elementary School and Hunter College High School, where one of his classmates was journalist Chris Hayes, who was Miranda's first director. As a student at Wesleyan University, Miranda co-founded a hip hop comedy troupe called Freestyle Love Supreme. He wrote the earliest draft of "In the Heights" in 1999, his sophomore year of college. 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. Miranda wrote and directed several other musicals at Wesleyan, and acted in many other productions. He graduated from Wesleyan in 2002.

He married his high school friend, Vanessa Adriana Nadal, in 2010. Their first son, Sebastian, was born in 2014.In December of 2017, Lin-Manuel announced on Twitter that his wife was expecting their second child. In February 2 2018, his second son, Francisco, was born. Lin-Manuel Miranda is also known for being an activist. He and President Barack Obama with others as well, had a meeting to discuss an action to back a Senate bill in Washington that would allow Puerto Rico to declare bankruptcy and significantly ease its $70 billion government-debt burden.

In 2002, Lin-Manuel Miranda, with John Buffalo Mailer, worked with director Thomas Kail to revise “In the Heights: The Musical”. After its success on off-Broadway, the musical went on Broadway, opening on March 2008. It was nominated for 13 Tony Awards, winning four, including Best Musical and Best Original Score. It also won the 2009 Grammy Award for Best Musical Theater Album. Miranda's performance in the leading role of Usnavi earned him a nomination for the Tony Award for Best Actor in a Musical. Miranda left the cast of the Broadway production on February 15, 2009.

After his huge success in “In the Heights”, Lin-Manuel Miranda read Ron Chernow’s biography of Alexander Hamilton. That inspired him to write a rap about Alexander Hamilton which later was performed in the White House Evening of Poetry and Music, accompanied by Alex Lacamoire. He said that it took him a year to write “My Shot” because he wanted to reflect Alexander’s intelligence in every verse. “Hamilton: An American Musical” premiered off-Broadway in January 2015, directed by Thomas Kail. Lin-Manuel Miranda played the main character, Alexander Hamilton, and also wrote a book about him. The show received a lot of good reviews and it had sold out in just a few hours. The musical premiered on Broadway in July 2015 at the Richard Rodgers Theatre and officially opened on August 6 2015, earning positive reviews. 

In his last performance in Hamilton, July 9 2016, he promised to return to the show. He will play Alexander Hamilton in Puerto Rico in 2018-2019.

In my opinion, what I admire about him is that he always makes people happy with his music and with his energetic personality. His lyrics can touch even the hearts who don’t want to listen to that kind of music aka rap. He also gives an opportunity to those who want to learn about the American Revolution to learn it in an easier way and maybe learn something more.