Lance Bass

James Lance Bass (born May 4, 1979) is an American singer, dancer, actor, podcaster, film and television producer.

He grew up in Mississippi and rose to fame as the bass singer for the American pop boy band NSYNC.

The band has sold over 70 million records, becoming one of the best-selling boy bands of all time.

NSYNC's success led Bass to work in film and television.

In 1995, during his junior year of high school, Bass received a call from Justin Timberlake and his mother, Lynn Harless, who asked Bass if he would be interested in auditioning for the pop group NSYNC after the group's original bass singer, Jason Galasso, had quit.

Timberlake's vocal coach (who had worked with Bass during his time as a Mississippi Show Stopper) recommended Bass as a replacement.

Bass was accepted into the group after auditioning in front of the other bandmembers, and soon left school to move to Orlando, Florida and rehearse full-time.

Bass has said that he did not know how to dance before he joined NSYNC, and therefore found much of the group's choreography difficult to learn.

According to an episode of VH1's Driven, Jan Bolz, president of BMG's German division, offered NSYNC a recording contract under the condition that they replace Bass, whose dancing, he felt, "wasn't at the same level as all the others."

However, Chris Kirkpatrick (who formed the band) refused to accept the contract without Bass, and the group's manager, Johnny Wright, convinced Bolz that Bass's dancing would quickly improve.

Bolz conceded, and the group soon moved to Munich, Germany to record their first album with BMG.

NSYNC began extensive touring in Europe, and Bass's mother quit her job to tour with the group as a chaperone, as Bass was still a minor.

After gaining significant notability in Europe, NSYNC was signed to the American record label RCA in 1997.

The group's first single, "I Want You Back" began receiving major radio play in the United States, and NSYNC soon found themselves becoming an "overnight sensation", a period which Bass describes in his autobiography as "the death of my own innocence".

Along with increasing fame and recognition in the United States, the band also experienced a highly publicized legal battle with Lou Pearlman, who originally put the band together, due to what the group believed were illicit business practices on his part.

NSYNC sued Pearlman and his record company, Trans Continental, for defrauding the group of more than 50% of their earnings, rather than his original promise of receiving only one-sixth of the profits.

The group threatened to leave and sign with Jive Records, which prompted Pearlman and RCA to countersue NSYNC for $150 million US, citing breach of contract.

The injunction was thrown out of court and, after winning back their earnings, NSYNC signed with Jive.

In March 2000, NSYNC released No Strings Attached, which became the fastest-selling record of all time, selling 1.1 million copies in its first day of release.

He starred in the 2001 film On the Line, which his company, Bacon & Eggs, also produced.

Bass later formed a second production company, Lance Bass Productions, as well as a now-defunct music management company, Free Lance Entertainment, a joint venture with Mercury Records.

After completion of NSYNC's PopOdyssey Tour, Bass moved to Star City, Russia, in a much publicized pursuit of a space tourism seat on a Soyuz space capsule.

Bass was certified by both NASA and the Russian Space Program after several months of cosmonaut training and planned to join the TMA-1 mission to the International Space Station.

However, after his financial sponsors backed out, Bass was denied a seat on the mission.

In 2001, the group followed up with their Celebrity album, which scored the second highest first-week album sales ever, trumped only by the group's previous album.

In July 2006, Bass came out as gay in a cover story for People magazine.

He was awarded the Human Rights Campaign Visibility Award in October 2006 and released an autobiography, Out of Sync, in October 2007, which debuted on the New York Times Best Seller list.

James Lance Bass was born in Laurel, Mississippi, to James Irvin Bass Jr., a medical technologist, and Diane (née Pulliam), a middle school mathematics, English, and career discovery teacher.

Along with his older sister, Stacy, Bass grew up in adjacent Ellisville, Mississippi, and was raised as a Southern Baptist.

Bass has described his family as devoutly Christian and conservative and has said that his childhood was "extremely happy".

As a young boy, Bass developed an interest in space, and at age 9 traveled to Cape Canaveral, Florida, with his father to watch his first live Space Shuttle launch.

Of this experience, Bass said, "I was certain from then on that my future was to be involved with space."

Shortly after, Bass attended space camp in Titusville, Florida, and aspired to attend college and study engineering, with the hope that he would one day work for NASA.

When Bass was 11 years old, his father was transferred to a different hospital, and the family moved to Clinton, Mississippi.

Bass began singing in his Baptist church choir and was encouraged to audition for local performance groups by his childhood best friend, Darren Dale, the youngest child of former longtime Mississippi Insurance Commissioner George Dale.

Bass joined the Mississippi Show Stoppers, a statewide music group sponsored by the Mississippi Agriculture and Forestry Museum, and the Attaché Show Choir, a national-award-winning competitive show choir group at Clinton High School.

He was also a member of a seven-man vocal group named Seven Card Stud, which competed at state fairs and performed at several social and political events for Senator Trent Lott.

At Clinton High School, Bass was elected vice president of his junior class and has said that he performed well in math and science.

However, Bass later said that his primary focus during high school was singing, and when reflecting on it, he remembers "hardly anything" about academia.

Bass's music career has consisted primarily of his singing with NSYNC and running a small management company.