Nick Carter

Nickolas Gene Carter (born January 28, 1980) is an American singer and a member of the vocal group Backstreet Boys.

He auditioned for several acting roles in the late 1980s and early 1990s, and performed around Tampa Bay, Florida.

According to Carter, he played the lead role in the fourth-grade production of Phantom of the Opera at Miles Elementary School.

He also did an educational video called "Reach For a Book," a show called "The Klub" and performed at the Tampa Bay Buccaneers home games for two years.

Carter's siblings include Leslie Carter (1986–2012), Aaron Carter (1987–2022), Angel Carter (born 1987), and Bobbie Jean Carter (1982–2023).

Between 1989 and 1993, Carter recorded various popular songs, including "Breaking Up Is Hard to Do" and "Uptown Girl" and a few original songs that he would perform at events.

These recordings appeared on an unofficial release called Before the Backstreet Boys 1989–1993 by Dynamic Discs, Inc., released in October 2002.

It was revealed that through several auditions, Carter met AJ McLean and Howie Dorough and they became friends.

He also made a brief appearance in the 1990 Tim Burton film Edward Scissorhands as a child playing on a Slip 'N Slide.

He stated, "It would be going too far to say I was actually in Edward Scissorhands because I was so far in the background that you can't tell it's me. It would be better to say I was on the set of the film... I was in the scene when Edward looks out of a window to the neighborhood. For a split second, he sees some kids playing - one of them was me. I was sliding on a yellow piece of plastic we used to call a Slip n' Slide. They were long flat sheets with water coming out of holes and were popular with kids at the time. I had to slide on one in the background of a shot. It was great fun being on the set but it was really cold and they made us do it a lot of times".

One of his dance teachers, Sandy, placed him in his first group, "Nick and the Angels."

The Backstreet Boys have recorded several albums, beginning in the mid-1990s, the latest being 2019's DNA.

At age 12, he put in a winning performance on the 1992 New Original Amateur Hour.

Carter has stated that he endured a difficult childhood in a turbulent, high-conflict home.

He has added that he was bullied and beaten up during junior high school.

Due to the unpleasant experiences he had in school, he left school and was homeschooled instead.

At 12 years old, Carter auditioned for Disney's The Mickey Mouse Club and the Backstreet Boys.

He was asked to join the group and was given the choice of either joining The Mickey Mouse Club with a $50,000 contract or this new music group.

Carter chose to go with the group rather than the Mickey Mouse Club.

After he joined the group, he had his own personal tutor on tour.

On April 20, 1993, when he was 13 years old, Carter formed the vocal group the Backstreet Boys along with AJ McLean, Brian Littrell, Howie Dorough, and Kevin Richardson.

Carter is the group's youngest member.

He stated in the Fall 1999 issue of teen magazine J-14 that "...I have lots of siblings. My dad, who's an only child, got all the attention [from his parents when he was a kid], but he had to make friends. I could make friends, but I always knew I had someone to play with and hang out with."

Growing up, Carter began his acting and singing career at a young age when his mother heard him outside and enrolled him in voice lessons with a voice teacher named Marianne Prinkey.

She later got him dance lessons in ballet, tap, and hip hop at Karl and DiMarco's School of Theatre and Dance when he was 10.

Carter performed in several commercials, talent shows, and the Florida State Fair.

In 2002, when the Backstreet Boys expressed a strong desire to leave their management company, The Firm, Carter was the first member of the group to choose to remain with them to manage his solo career and work on a solo album.

Around then, Carter started writing songs and recording during his downtime when Jive asked him to do a solo album.

As the group began recording their new album without him, he started working on his first solo album.

In September 2002, Carter released the first single from his solo album, "Help Me" which did well on radio countdowns landing at #1 on various stations including New York City's Z100 and achieved considerable worldwide success while the other single, "I Got You" was a minor hit in Europe.

On October 29, 2002, his first solo album Now Or Never was released and sold over 500,000 copies in the first week.

It reached No. 17 on the Billboard 200 charts and was certified gold, both in the United States and Canada.

In 2013 or 2014, Carter received his GED as shown on I Heart Nick Carter.

As of 2015, Carter has released three solo albums, Now or Never, I'm Taking Off and All American, during breaks between Backstreet Boys schedules, and a collaboration with Jordan Knight titled Nick & Knight.

He has made occasional television appearances and starred in his own reality shows, House of Carters and I (Heart) Nick Carter.

In March 2016, the group announced that they would begin an exclusive headlining residency at Planet Hollywood in Las Vegas called Backstreet Boys: Larger Than Life.

By October 14, 2022, their first-holiday album A Very Backstreet Christmas was released.

Carter was born in Jamestown, New York, where his parents, Jane Eleonora Schneck (née Spaulding, previously Carter) and Robert Carter (d. 2017), owned a bar called the Yankee Rebel in Westfield, New York.

His ancestry is primarily North and West European.

Several years later, when Carter was four, the family moved to Ruskin, Florida, near Tampa, and managed the Garden Villa Retirement Home, where they added to the family.