Biography

American composer/lyricist Kristen Anderson-Lopez is recognized for the alternately playful and poignant songs she's written for the big screen with her husband, Robert Lopez. After beginning to work together in the mid-2000s, the songwriting team has become known around the world for the Academy Award-winning Disney anthems "Let It Go" from Frozen (2013) and "Remember Me" from Coco (2017). New York City native Kristen J. Anderson met fellow aspiring songwriter Robert Lopez while enrolled at the BMI Lehman Engel Musical Theatre Workshop in the late '90s. The couple married in 2003. In the meantime, Robert Lopez had partnered with another workshop attendee, Jeff Marx, to create and compose songs for the musical Avenue Q. It opened on Broadway in 2003 and won Tonys for best musical, book, and score in 2004. Known by then as Kristen Anderson-Lopez, Anderson-Lopez also worked on music projects with her spouse, including an adaptation of Disney/Pixar's Finding Nemo for the Disney's Animal Kingdom theme park. It debuted in early 2007. The couple later reteamed to write songs for the Disney-animated film Winnie the Pooh. Also featuring Anderson-Lopez as the voice of Kanga, the movie saw release in 2011. Robert's musical with Trey Parker and Matt Stone, The Book of Mormon, opened on Broadway the same year. The spouses then set to work on songs for the Disney animated musical Frozen. Released in 2013, Frozen became an international blockbuster, and the ubiquitous "Let It Go" won the Lopezes the Oscar for Best Original Song in 2014. It later won a Grammy for Best Song Written for Visual Media. About the intersecting lives of New Yorkers on public transit, the musical In Transit was written and composed by Anderson-Lopez in collaboration with James-Allen Ford, Russ Kaplan, and Sara Wordsworth in the early 2000s. After opening off-Broadway in 2010, it had its Broadway premiere in November 2016 and ran for five months. Meanwhile, Disney recruited her and her husband again for an important song to the plot of the 2017 Pixar film musical Coco. "Remember Me" won them their second Academy Award in March of 2018. That same month, Frozen: The Broadway Musical opened at the St. James Theatre. Following the arrival of the film sequel Frozen II in theaters in late 2019, "Into the Unknown" became the couple's third Oscar-nominated song. ~ Marcy Donelson, Rovi