With ‘In the Heights,’ Anthony Ramos Finds Stardom on His Own Terms

At a time when moviegoers are getting reacquainted with the idea of returning to theaters, Ramos said he was hopeful that “In the Heights” would supply some of the uplift that he felt has been missing from releases in recent months.

“We don’t have enough movies right now that feel like a celebration of life,” he said. “We need movies that are telling real and honest stories in a raw way that are hard for people to watch. But also, like, we need to feel happy. There’s also joy. That’s like a thing that exists.”

Only a few miles from here, Ramos had experienced a less sunny coming-of-age in Bushwick. Raised by a single mother in Hope Gardens, a public housing development, he was the middle of three children in a family where money was often scarce. For a few years he also lived with his aunt and cousins in Bensonhurst.

Baseball might have offered him a way out, but one day, at the age of 17, “I just stopped showing up to games,” he said. “I had a moment on the field where I was like, yeah, this ain’t it. I didn’t belong there anymore.”

Ramos, who is of Puerto Rican descent, was already a singer and performer — the kid who recorded his own rap tracks on a rudimentary Dell computer using beats he had lifted from LimeWire and who crooned Temptations songs at class assemblies. He wore a blonde wig to play Jack in a student production of “Into the Woods” and was cast in another homegrown musical as a love-song-slinging Zeus in a cardboard crown.

By his own admission, his grades had been poor and his college prospects dimmed after he quit sports. But one of his teachers at New Utrecht High School, Sara Steinweiss, encouraged him to try out for the American Musical and Dramatic Academy in Manhattan, helping him with his audition and paying the application fee he couldn’t afford. After Ramos got in, a scholarship established by Jerry Seinfeld covered the cost of his tuition.