Robert Lopez

Robert Lopez (born February 23, 1975) is an American songwriter for musicals and playwright, best known for co-creating The Book of Mormon and Avenue Q, and for co-writing the songs featured in the Disney computer-animated films Frozen, its sequel Frozen II, and Coco, with his wife Kristen Anderson-Lopez.

He is one of only nineteen people who have won an Emmy, a Grammy, an Oscar and a Tony Award, nicknamed by Philip Michael Thomas in 1984 as the "EGOT".

He additionally holds the distinctions of being the youngest person to win an EGOT, and winning the awards across the shortest period of time: he won all four in the span of ten years and completed the set at the age of 39.

He is also the only person to have won all four awards more than once, having won two Oscars, three Tonys, three Grammys, and four Emmys.

Lopez went to Hunter College Elementary School and Hunter College High School, and then on to Yale University where he graduated in 1997 with a Bachelor of Arts degree in English (the type of academic degree expressly discussed in the second song of Avenue Q).

While at Yale, he wrote three plays (of which two were musicals) and was a member of the Yale Spizzwinks a cappella group, and was influenced by professors such as Vincent Scully, John Hollander and Harold Bloom.

During his time at Yale, he vaguely hoped to make a living writing musicals and "had no [other] career options"; towards that end, he avoided courses that would prepare him for a career in something more secure like law or medicine.

Upon graduating from Yale, Lopez moved back in with his parents and brother in Greenwich Village, where he lived for four years until he was able to earn enough money writing songs for Theatreworks USA to rent an apartment of his own.

During this period, he took temporary jobs at companies like Pfizer and worked as a weekend receptionist for his old music school, Greenwich House.

In 1998, while participating in the BMI Lehman Engel Musical Theater Workshop, he met another aspiring songwriter, Jeff Marx.

Their first project together, Kermit, Prince of Denmark, a Muppet parody of Hamlet, won the Kleban Award for lyrics, though The Jim Henson Company rejected the script, saying it did not have enough "kid appeal."

In 1999, Lopez and Marx, who collaborated on both music and lyrics, began work on Avenue Q, a stage musical which, using puppet characters, similar to those on Sesame Street, dealt with adult themes and ideas.

The show, for which Lopez also provided the animated segments, was his first professional experience.

After playing Off-Broadway, the show transferred in July 2003 to Broadway's John Golden Theatre, where it proved both a critical and popular success, winning the 2004 Tony Award for Best Musical, and earning Lopez and Marx the Tony Award for Best Original Score.

The story was considered for the next Muppet film by Chris Curtin in 2004, until Curtin left the Disney Company.

Highlights from the unproduced musical were performed by Rick Lyon, Rebecca Jones, and Susan Blackwell at the BMI Workshop.

The Original Cast Recording was nominated for a Grammy Award in 2004.

In 2005, Lopez began working on a new musical project with his musical partner Jeff Marx, and with Matt Stone and Trey Parker, the creators of South Park, a series which, in 2003, Lopez had mentioned as a partial inspiration for Avenue Q.

In early 2006, Lopez collaborated with his brother, Billy, on several episodes of the Nickelodeon series Wonder Pets, for which they shared a Daytime Emmy award with the series' other composers and music director, Jeffrey Lesser, in 2008.

In January 2007, a musical adaptation of the Disney/Pixar film Finding Nemo, which Lopez co-wrote with his wife, Kristen Anderson-Lopez, opened at Disney's Animal Kingdom theme park.

On January 18, 2007, Lopez and Marx again collaborated to write four of the songs for the hit TV show Scrubs on the show's 123rd episode titled "My Musical."

TV Guide named the episode one of the best 100 TV show episodes of all time in 2009.

Lopez, along with Jeff Marx, was recognized with an Emmy nomination for the song "Everything Comes Down to Poo" from the above-mentioned episode.

Stephanie D'Abruzzo, who originated the roles of Kate Monster and Lucy the Slut in Avenue Q, guest-starred in the episode.

With a second set of competitive wins beginning with his June 27, 2010 Emmy and concluding with his March 4, 2018 Academy Award, he has broken his own 'fastest to complete' record, establishing a new fastest EGOT interval at 7 year, 8 months.

Robert Lopez was born in Manhattan, to Katherine (Lowe) and Frank Lopez.

He is partly of Filipino descent through his father (who was born on a ship in the middle of the ocean after departing Manila); his paternal grandfather was Filipino, and his paternal grandmother was of half Filipino and half Scottish-American descent (both originally resided in Manila).

His father was director of publications for NYU Langone Medical Center.

Lopez spent much of his childhood in Greenwich Village, except for one year in Massachusetts while his father was working for Clark University.

Upon their return to New York City when he was six years old, "it was a fluke" that he started piano lessons at Greenwich House Music School.

The apartment they were subletting at the time happened to have a piano; his mother asked if he was interested in taking lessons, and he said yes.

At age seven, his parents bought a piano for him, he saw his first Broadway show, and he wrote his first song.

At age 11, he wrote his first opening number.

At around age 12, he briefly moved away from the piano and tried playing the saxophone, as well as taking courses in musical composition at other music schools.

In April 2010, Lopez wrote the song "Bet Against the American Dream," which was featured on the NPR program This American Life.

The song was written in the style of a Broadway show tune, and parodied a scene from the musical The Producers to illustrate the story of a real-life hedge fund called Magnetar that made millions of dollars when the housing market collapsed.

On June 25, 2010, Lopez won his second Daytime Creative Arts Emmy for Outstanding Achievement in Music Direction and Composition for his work on The Wonder Pets! In 2011, Lopez again worked with Matt Stone and Trey Parker on the South Park episode "Broadway Bro Down.”

The Book of Mormon premiered on Broadway at the Eugene O'Neill Theatre on March 24, 2011, following previews from February 24.

The show received numerous theater awards, including the 2011 Tony for Best Musical, as well as two more Tony Awards for Lopez: Best Original Score and Best Book of a Musical.

The production's original cast recording also earned Lopez the 2012 Grammy Award for Best Musical Theater Album.