All About Anthony Ramos’ Parents, Mildred Ramos and Mario Martinez (2024)

Anthony Ramos has called the support he’s received from his parents, Mildred Ramos and Mario Martinez, “a blessing.”

The Hamilton star and his two siblings — his older brother Mario and younger sister Stephanie — were raised by their mom in Bushwick, Brooklyn. While living in the projects, Mildred and her children struggled to put food on the table and faced eviction, according to The Guardian. Since then, Anthony has praised his mother for loving and caring for him and his siblings during those difficult times.

“Ma I love you more you will ever know," he wrote in part on Facebook for Mother’s Day in 2020. "You fed us, clothed us, gave us shelter, and most importantly loved us unconditionally. We didn’t have much, but we had everything.”

While his dad Mario wasn't as involved in his upbringing, Anthony began reconnecting with him in early adulthood. Mario even attended the 2016 Grammys alongside Mildred to watch their son and the rest of the Hamilton cast receive the award for best musical theater album.

“One of the highlights of my career was when we won the Grammy. I held it up and both my parents were sitting in the orchestra, house left,” Anthony told Teen Vogue in 2016. “I could see them beaming with happiness. Them being excited gets me excited. Seeing them at the theater ... It’s a blessing.”

Here’s everything to know about Anthony Ramos’ parents, Mildred Ramos and Mario Martinez.

Mildred and Mario welcomed three children together

Mildred and Mario shared three kids: sons Mario and Anthony and daughter Stephanie.

Anthony and Stephanie are the closest in age, only 11 months apart, the actor said on the WTF with Marc Maron podcast in 2023, describing his sister as “really smart” and “beautiful.”

The tight-knit family supports Anthony’s career, but they’re closely involved in it as well.

Mildred and Stephanie both had cameos alongside Anthony in the 2019 Broadway-show-turned-movie In The Heights. In an interview with Fandango, Anthony said he didn’t need to prepare for the role because “life prepared me,” referring to his upbringing in Brooklyn, a location that closely paralleled Washington Heights in Manhattan, where the film was shot.

“That was the best part about doing this film. We got to shoot at home ... My mom is in this movie, my sister’s in this movie — it don’t get any more authentic than that,” he said.

Anthony’s brother Mario is even more active in his career. Anthony told host Marc Maron on the WTF with Marc Maron podcast that he “trusts [Mario] with everything,” and Mario serves as his right-hand man, accompanying him to work events and projects.

“We work together, we travel together. He’s in my entourage, my road manager, confidante, he helps me with everything,” Anthony said, adding that he often jokes about the quality of his brother’s help. “I’m sure I could get a way better assistant, but not someone I could trust as much.”

For his part, Mario had similar things to say about Anthony. “My brother's kind of been like my partner in crime. Like, you've got that one homie that's down to ride,” Mario said on an episode of the CBS home makeover show Secret Celebrity Renovation.

Mildred raised Anthony and his siblings

Anthony has been open about the difficulties of his childhood: As a single mother, Mildred brought up Anthony and his siblings on her own in the Hope Gardens housing project in Bushwick, Brooklyn, according to The New York Times. His father, who struggled with substance abuse, was often in and out of their lives.

Mildred worked as a medical biller in Brooklyn at Jamaica Hospital and Long Island College Hospital, Anthony said on WTF with Marc Maron in 2023.

“She was making $30,000 a year before taxes, so that was barely 10 Gs a kid,” Anthony told The Hollywood Reporter in 2021. “Contesting with poverty and always seeing her stressed was hard, and there were drugs and alcohol in my family — that was hard to deal with as well.”

That said, his childhood wasn’t always marred by challenges. Anthony told Men’s Health in 2021 that his mother supported his performing talents early on.

“My mom would ask me to sing for family events [like] Thanksgiving,” he told the outlet. “I was that kid in the family that could sing. It’s like that uncle that could do magic tricks. That was me.”

Anthony reconnected with his dad as an adult

Though Anthony and his father, Mario, had an estranged relationship when the Transformers star was a child, they reconnected when Anthony was in his 20s.

On the Man Enough podcast with Justin Baldoni in 2023, Anthony opened up about growing up with and without his father. He admitted that, at the time, he wrongfully assumed he was the reason his father was unhappy or absent.

“We struggle, just as a family, with substance abuse — you know, drugs, alcohol. Specifically with my dad, I’d always tried to stay out of the way and not get him upset,” he said. “As a kid, I was like, ‘I definitely must be the problem because he’s not around, and I keep making him upset, or I keep doing things that make him mad.’ ”

Later in life, Anthony and his father — as well as his mother and siblings — reconnected, and Mario apologized “so many times” for what happened in Anthony’s childhood. “I told him, ‘It’s alright, you don’t have to make up for anything,' " the actor recalled. "'There’s nothing you can do now. Just be there, you don’t have to do anything extra.' "

In 2019, they faced another challenge in their relationship: his father was severely sick while Anthony was filming In the Heights. On the Sway in the Morning radio show that year, Anthony talked about trying to support Mario while working 15 hours a day on set.

“Thank god my brother was holding it down, everybody was supporting my mom, going with him to doctor’s appointments,” he said on the show. “But we didn't know if we were going to have him much longer, we could lose him any minute.”

While Anthony and Mario became closer over the years, their bond didn't happen overnight when they started speaking again. Anthony shared what it was like starting over with his dad, whom he didn't really know.

“You’re trying to work on a relationship that you didn’t have your whole life. Now you’re trying to be best friends with someone you were never friends with,” he explained. “My dad and I, we have a great relationship [now] and I love him — he’s amazing. But that took time to build to.”

Mildred is Anthony’s "biggest critic"

On Live with Kelly and Mark in 2023, Anthony said that his mom critiques his work “all the time.”

After one of his debut performances as Usnavi in In the Heights at the Kennedy Center, he said, “I come off stage [and] I asked ‘Yo ma, what did you think?’ She’s like, ‘It was good but ... were you nervous? Because you was a little stiff.’ ”

He told hosts Kelly Ripa and Mark Consuelos that he didn't agree with her analysis of his performance, but “she watched it, I didn’t watch myself.”

As for his other achievements, like the Grammy he won as part of Hamilton’s original cast, Anthony has said that Mildred isn’t too precious with them.

“My mom has [the Grammy] somewhere buried beneath the files of her life in some closet in a bin,” Anthony said on WTF with Marc Maron in 2023. “I have no idea where that thing is.”

Anthony traced his father’s ancestry back nine generations

In 2024, appearing on an episode of PBS’s Finding Your Roots, Anthony unpacked his genealogy and traced his lineage on his dad's side.

Anthony learned that his paternal grandparents immigrated from Puerto Rico to the United States in the 1950s and that his grandmother died when his father was less than 1 year old. He told host Henry Louis Gates Jr. that he knew his dad lost his mother at a young age, but he didn’t think it was during infancy.

“I can’t imagine that it doesn't leave a hole in you for your whole life — a lot of questions you’ll never get answered,” Anthony said. “My dad never spoke to me about any of this. Ever. I think maybe it was because he tried to bury it. It was too painful.”

Anthony and Henry continued to trace his roots back nine generations, discovering that his family originally sailed to Puerto Rico from Tenerife in the Canary Islands, and one of his ancestors was a Guanche enslaved man named Andrés.

Anthony’s father died shortly after filming the episode, according to a Facebook post from the Finding Your Roots host — however, Anthony has not yet publicly commented on his father’s death.

They inspired Anthony’s music

Anthony’s upbringing has inspired much of his music, but the song “Dear Diary” from his 2018 debut album, The Good and the Bad, drew from his experiences with both of his parents.

The lyrics mention Anthony leaving home to chase his career goals but always being able to return home, as well as the lessons he’s learned from his mother and his relationship with his father.

On the Sway in the Morning radio show in 2019, Anthony talked about the story behind the song, explaining that at the time, his father had sent him a hurtful text message that left Anthony crying in his friend’s arms — which inspired the song's second verse.

After they made up, he played the song for his dad. “I didn’t know how he was going to react. We’re good now, but when I wrote that [we weren’t],” he said. “I played it for him, and he was like, ‘Kid, that’s beautiful.’ ”