Lin-Manuel Miranda, American actor, playwright, and composer
Lin-Manuel Miranda (; born January 16, 1980) is an American actor, songwriter, rapper, playwright, producer, singer and film director. He is known for creating the Broadway musicals In the Heights (2005) and Hamilton (2015), and the soundtrack of Disney's Encanto (2021). His accolades include three Tony Awards, three Grammy Awards, two Laurence Olivier Awards, two Primetime Emmy Awards, a MacArthur Fellowship Award, a Kennedy Center Honor, and a Pulitzer Prize.
A graduate of Wesleyan University, Miranda made his Broadway debut in the 2008 musical In the Heights, in which he starred and wrote the music and lyrics. The production was a critical and commercial success, winning the Tony Awards for Best Musical and Best Original Score, and the Grammy Award for Best Musical Theater Album. The stage musical was adapted into a film released in June 2021. Miranda gained wider recognition for writing the script, music, and lyrics for Hamilton, which has been acclaimed as a pop culture phenomenon since its 2015 Broadway premiere. It earned the Pulitzer Prize for Drama and was nominated for a record 16 Tony Awards and won 11, including Miranda's first win for the Best Book of a Musical. The Hamilton cast recording spent ten weeks atop Billboard's Top Rap Albums chart and became the eleventh-biggest album of the 2010s. The Hamilton Mixtape, a cover album by Miranda, further reached number one on the Billboard 200.
A frequent collaborator of the Walt Disney Company, Miranda has written original songs for the studio, which has garnered him two nominations for the Academy Award for Best Original Song ("How Far I'll Go" and "Dos Oruguitas"). He worked on the 2016 animated musical Moana, and wrote the story and music for Encanto—a widespread critical and commercial success; its song "We Don't Talk About Bruno" broke various records, marked Miranda's first-ever number-one song on the US Billboard Hot 100 and the UK Singles charts, and cemented his mainstream fame. 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 Golden Globe and Primetime Emmy Award nominations.
Miranda debuted as a film director with Tick, Tick...Boom! (2021), a biographical musical drama. He also had a voice role in the animated film Vivo, released in 2021. His television work includes recurring roles on The Electric Company (2009–2010) and His Dark Materials (2019). Miranda hosted Saturday Night Live in 2016 and had a guest role on Curb Your Enthusiasm in 2018, for which 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, and supported the 2016 PROMESA. He met with politicians in 2016 to speak out in favor of debt relief for Puerto Rico and raised funds for rescue efforts and disaster relief after Hurricane Maria in 2017.