From the very beginning, Camila Miramontes and her son were in it together. Raised in Bushwick, Brooklyn, Camila lived her youngest years in her dream love story: she met Michael Thorne on her block when she was ten years old, and the two were inseparable. Their love story was romantic, but brief: less than two years after their wedding, Camila eight months pregnant with their first child, Michael passed away unexpectedly from an undiagnosed heart condition. Her son, Michael Jr., came into the world with nothing to tie him to his father but his name.

In the aftermath of Michael Sr.'s passing, Michael--Román since birth--was raised by his mother, grandmother, and aunts, each sharing a piece of the burden in order to allow Camila time to grieve and carry on providing for her infant son. They carried on that way, mother and child against the world, for the first three years of Roman's life, when she met and fell in love with Calvin Miller, a middle school gym teacher and track coach. When they got married, Camila kept her first married name as a tribute to her husband and in solidarity with her son, but Calvin took on the mantle of father and raised Roman as his own son. Together, they raised three more children: Luis, Keisha, and Michelle in a Bushwick apartment one floor beneath the one where Camila's mother and aunts still lived. They were poor, but they were happy; the kids took odd jobs doing janitorial work after hours at school, walked dogs, babysat, and did whatever they could to keep their families afloat. Calvin encouraged them to develop their talents, no matter where that led them. Luis, Keisha, and Michelle excelled in baseball, volleyball, and track respectively, while an almost comically near-sighted Roman turned to a long-developed love of music instead. At age 9, he was cast in a school production of Tom Sawyer, and a passion for theatre developed alongside it. Calvin and Camila didn't understand and were wary of their eldest son's penchant for pretending, but when they didn't understand, they got out of his way, and he pursued theatre with the same fanatical passion that his brother and sisters gave to sports

His first big break came unexpectedly when, after seeing his performance in a community version of A Midsummer Night's Dream, Todd Graff invited him to audition for Camp, his directoral debut. The film, as well as his performance as Michael Flores, were received with mixed reviews, and Camila and Calvin were among those who politely nodded and smiled at the film's content. The connection to Graff, himself a Tony winner, opened doors for Roman, and within two years, he made his Broadway debut in the ensemble cast of Rent as Steve and the understudy for Angel Schunard. His second big break came in 2006, when he was cast as brooding teenager Moritz Stiefel in Spring Awakening. Almost overnight, the show was a wild success, and he and his castmates were suddenly forces to be reckoned with in the theatre community. In 2007, he stumbled through a Tony acceptance speech at the age of 24, thanked Camila and Calvin for supporting him, and finally felt as though he'd made something of himself.

After his Spring Awakening success, Roman worked steadily, a fixture on and off Broadway until he joined the US touring company for Lin-Manuel Miranda's In The Heights. He gained steady acclaim as an actor with a versatile skillset, a social media darling, and every bit the Bushwick boy he'd been his entire life. His only major brush with fame came in 2012 when he was cast in two mainstream films: Les Miserables and The Dark Knight Rises. Suddenly, people cared who the mysterious unknown was, and rather than lean in to the momentum of sudden stardom, he retreated just as quickly to the relative obscurity of indie films. In January 2015, he made his homecoming to the stage in a second Lin-Manuel Miranda play. Hamilton is currently in previews at the Richard Rodgers theatre on Broadway, and will be Roman's home for the foreseeable future.