Lin-Manuel Miranda
Lin-Manuel Miranda
Lin-Manuel Mirandais an American actor, composer, rapper and writer, best known for creating and starring in the Broadway musicals Hamilton and In the Heights. He has won a Pulitzer Prize, two Grammys, an Emmy, a MacArthur "Genius" Award, and three Tony awards, among others...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionRapper
Date of Birth16 January 1980
CityNew York City, NY
CountryUnited States of America
anytime created received
Anytime you write something, you go through so many phases. You go through the 'I'm a Fraud' phase. You go through the 'I'll Never Finish' phase. And every once in a while you think, 'What if I actually have created what I set out to create, and it's received as such?'
pursue pursued takes
I like the quiet it takes to pursue an idea the way I pursued 'Hamilton,' but I couldn't write a book, because there's no applause at the end of writing a book.
kissing lax listed scene terrible wrote
I made a movie when I was 15 years old with all my friends. This is when IMDb was a little more lax with its proceedings, so it's listed as one of my projects. I was 15 years old; it's a terrible movie. I wrote 50 percent of it because I wanted to kiss this one girl, and I wrote a kissing scene for it.
bad best shows works
In the best works of fiction, there's no mustache-twirling villain. I try to write shows where even the bad guy's got his reasons.
If Hamilton were on Twitter, he would have been a worse oversharer than me.
saw shows
The only shows I saw as a kid were that holy trinity: 'Les Miz,' 'Cats,' 'Phantom.'
charge learned people
What I learned from my go-round with 'In the Heights' is that it's tough to make a movie. In Hollywood, even the people in charge have people in charge.
aaron amount audience courage curtain gave happens highest hope information pulls scene trust
'West Wing' was huge. Like 'Hamilton,' it pulls back the curtain on how decision-making happens at the highest level, or at least how you hope it would be. The amount of information Aaron Sorkin packs into a scene gave me this courage to trust the audience to keep up.
asked chose felt house instead meeting
When I was asked to do a song from 'In the Heights' at the White House in 2009, I chose instead to do 'Alexander Hamilton' because I felt like I was meeting a moment.
christmas days favorite hooked people sing sit time
One of my first favorite books was 'The 12 Days of Christmas,' and I would just go up to people and say, 'I can sing 'The 12 Days of Christmas,' and I would make them sit through me reciting it, and I'd go all the way, each time. I've always hooked into lyrics.
great playing shatner william
Pretty much anything William Shatner is in is great. He's great at playing that 'I'm the only one sane in the world' character.
beat chord computer export keyboard loop music noodle processes record separate sort until
I like to separate the music- and lyric-writing processes if I can. I'll sort of noodle around on my keyboard and my computer until I have a beat or a chord progression, I'll record it as a loop, export it to iTunes, then walk around with the loop and sort of talk to myself in the loop, and that's how I get the lyrics.
catherine chosen fed fellow forward grant help honored hugely inspires john life soul support throughout using work
I'm honored to have been chosen as a fellow of the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation. I am hugely appreciative for the support I have had throughout my life, and I look forward to using the grant to help institutions that have fed my soul and to support new work that inspires me.
new-york cities america
Ed Koch once said that New York City is where immigrants come to audition for America. That's what happened to my parents; that's what happened to me.