Anthony Ramos Says Broadway's 'In the Heights' was a 'Beacon of Hope' When He Wanted to Quit Acting

Anthony Ramos didn't think he had much of a future in Hollywood until a chance outing changed his life.

The actor, 29, now starring in the movie musical In the Heights, was in low spirits when his drama school gave away tickets to the original Broadway production of Lin-Manuel Miranda's first smash hit show.

Ramos, a Brooklyn native whose family comes from the "east side of Puerto Rico," took up the offer and caught Heights on stage right before it closed. Sitting in the audience, Ramos finally saw a future for himself as an actor and singer.

"This show was this little beacon of hope. I never saw a show like that," he explains in this week's issue of PEOPLE, on stands Friday. "I'd never seen a show where the cast spoke like people I knew, looked like people I knew from my neighborhood."

"The story means a lot to me," he adds, "I grew up in a community like Washington Heights."

In the Heights follows a Latin American community in Washington Heights, a neighborhood at the top of Manhattan. In true Miranda style, the characters rap and sing about their hardships while trying to stay afloat in a block that's quickly being gentrified.

For Ramos, the movie is all about celebrating his culture, and no scene brings that together more than "Carnaval del Barrio." The rousing number near the end of the movie has every character throwing their flags up and being proud of where they came from.

"'Carnaval,' for me, I tell people that was the best day I've ever had on the set in my life," Ramos says. "It was almost like this metaphor for what life can be: it doesn't matter where you are in the world, you can be proud of where you're from."

In the end, it's a story about being proud of one's culture, which spoke to Ramos.

"My family comes from the east side of Puerto Rico. I grew up in New York. I grew up in the projects in Brooklyn," he says. "Who you are is a mixture of where your family came from and where you grew up."

Ramos grew up in Bushwick, Brooklyn with his mom, Mildred, and two siblings. As the family struggled to make ends meet, Ramos turned first to baseball before realizing that wasn't his life's calling. Instead, the actor ended up being cast in his high school musical and later scored a full scholarship to the American Musical and Dramatic Academy thanks to his a dedicated teacher.

"When you're going through it, you're just trying to get by, but these experiences were the things that made me who I am," he says of his childhood struggles. "I think that's helped me along the way to really remember, 'Yo, you went through that. You got through that. So like, it's going to be okay.' Everything will pan out the way it's supposed to."

In the Heights is in theaters and streaming on HBO Max now.