Robert Lopez was born and raised in New York City and learned to play the piano as a child. After seeing his first Broadway show at the age of seven, he began to write music and went on to take courses in musical composition. He studied English at Yale (a degree that is humorously discussed in Avenue Q), during which time he decided to pursue writing musicals as a full-time career.
Lopez met songwriter Jeff Marx at a musical workshop in New York and the pair began to write together. In 1999, they started work on Avenue Q, Lopez’s first professional gig. It premiered Off-Broadway, before transferring to Broadway’s John Golden Theatre in 2003. The show was a huge success, winning the Tony Awards for Best Musical and Best Original Score. Lopez and Marx continued their collaboration, writing extensively for television.
Lopez then teamed up with the creators of South Park, Matt Stone and Trey Parker, to work on the musical The Book of Mormon. The 2011 production earned Lopez another Tony Award for Best Musical, as well as Best Original Score and Best Book of a Musical. The original cast recording also went on to win the 2012 Grammy Award for Best Musical Theatre Album.
Lopez is married to Kristen Anderson-Lopez, with whom he has two daughters. Anderson-Lopez is a lyricist and the couple have collaborated together many times. Most notably, writing the songs for the hit Disney movie Frozen and its sequel. When “Let It Go” won the Academy Award for Best Song, Lopez became the twelfth person to achieve the EGOT. He then became the first double EGOT winner when Lopez and Anderson-Lopez’s song “Remember Me” (from the Disney/Pixar film Coco) won the Academy Award in 2018.
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