Nick Carter

Life Story, as told by himself:

It was all started in a small town in Upstate New York called Jamestown. I was born in the same hospital as Lucille Ball of I Love Lucy fame. There was a lounge called the Yankee Rebel, which my father and my grandmother both owned - it was a small place. My sister BJ was born up there, but my other brother and sisters were born in Florida. We had a house on Webber Road; I used to love it up there, it was so fun! My grandparents all lived up there. We had a little dance floor at the Yankee Rebel, and my dad used to be DJ and play records. When I was real small, I'd get up there in my diapers, and dance around! I have pictures of me wearing headphones that were bigger than my face! I was just a little chunk; everybody used to call me 'Charlie Brown' when I was little. This is all before BJ was born. One time my parents thought they lost me, they were walking around looking for me saying "Where's Nicky? Where's Nicky?" We had an old Pac-Man game and I pulled up the stool; there I was in my white diaper, sitting up on the stool playing the game. That was when my love of video games began! My parents thought it'd be cool to move down to Florida and start a different business, so they packed up their old Cadillac Eldorado and loaded all our stuff into this little trailer. I was about 5 or 6 then. The performing bug really didn't hit me until I was about six or seven... 'maybe I can sing, maybe I can do this, maybe I can do that.' So we make it to Florida, and we moved into our first house. I guess it was a retirement home, because that's where my dad first started working. We lived there for maybe a year. It was about a 16-person facility and we built onto it. My sister and I used to play with frogs and stuff around there! I have pictures of us all in mud and we have frogs on top of our heads! We got into some painting one time! We were painting a chair for my father and we were joking around and started painting each other. And so we had to take a bath in one of those little swimming pools. We, me and BJ, used to get into so much mischief, it was so funny. One of my favorite things to do in the backyard was go swinging on the hammock. I'd have her on it, and twist her up in it let it go and watch her spin. She kept spinning and she'd get all dizzy and tell mom. This was a big backyard and the senior citizens really didn't care. Another thing my sister and I liked to do was sword fights with wood sticks. We would do that all the time. We got friendly with a few of the older people. My sister got really close to a woman named Millie, then Millie passed away. They used to be real good friends; Millie would buy her stuff. Being around older people, I learned to respect people and that also helped me. When we moved to another place, I met one of my best friends, his name was Brent and he and I used to get in trouble and all that. In all, I'd say my family and I have lived in about five different houses down there. We kept the same business, we just kept trying to live closer to the retirement home without living there. Eventually we did, we moved very close to it. My mom was a cook at the retirement home, an excellent cook. My mom's a really good cook! My brother Aaron, and my sister, Angel (they're twins) were born at Tampa General/Children's Hospital. Leslie was born in the retirement home. She wasn't born in the hospital. I had to cope with my mother giving Leslie more attention then BJ and me. We would talk to each other and say 'Gosh, she's getting all the attention!' My grandma would spoil her. We get along now, because Leslie gets treated the same as us now. When the twins came, that really affected my everybody. Leslie got jealous too! I was excited to have another brother! The twins really didn't change my life much, but I guess you could say it was a happy change, because now I have lots of siblings! My dad was only child, got all the attention, but didn't always have someone to play with and hang out with. My first school was Miles Elementary. Miles was my favorite school. I loved that school! I was there for four years. That was when I did my first play, The Phantom of the Opera. My teacher helped me get into it. What happened was: She picked someone for the role, but he couldn't sing, so he sort of strayed off. She needed to find somebody and luckily I was there. I was really nervous about my first play, but I pulled through. I felt good about it. Being on stage is my life! Next year I went to Orange Grove. I had favorite teachers there too. This was elementary. I missed a lot of school, because I did a lot of acting then. I started when I was about nine years old, right after Phantom of the Opera. We were kind of tossed between acting, dancing or singing, so I kind of dabbled in a few of them. I did plays and commercials and sang in a few places. I did commercials for the Lottery and the Money Store (I was about 10) a lot of that kind of stuff. I really decided what I wanted to be when I was singing. I auditioned for the Mickey Mouse Club and Backstreet Boys. And the Mickey Mouse Club said they wanted me. I had a feeling that was goin' to be my good acting year - everybody has a good acting year! I had to choose between the 2 of them ... Backstreet Boys or Mickey Mouse Club! My siblings loved coming with me to auditions and stuff. The little ones were so young then, they didn't really know what was happening. My first commercial was for the Money Store, I was about ten. Then I got called by the Mickey Mouse Club and Backstreet Boys all at the same time. It just changed my whole life - I was twelve going on thirteen. Of course, I turned the Mickey Mouse Club down for Backstreet Boys! It was kind of scary; they're were meetings, and they talked about when Backstreet Boys were going to get a record deal... but we did quickly become local sensations! We did malls and worked around local places. I was the youngest, next oldest was Aj, next oldest was Brian, next was Howie and the oldest was Kevin. I was probably closest to Howie, Brian and Aj at the time. When we began traveling together and rooming together, I turned out to be the one who liked to sleep the most, Aj ate the most - and I pulled the most practical jokes! I brought my Super Nintendo with me too for whatever free time I had. In those days, when I was at home, I went to Universal Studios a lot - I liked to ride Jaws! I'm actually afraid of sharks for real! I had a dream one time, the worst dream in the world : I was on the back of a big cruise ship, and I leaned over the rail. We were in the Bahamas and the water was crystal clear. This lady pulls up on a red jet-ski and we're talking to each other. Suddenly, there's this 26 foot Great White Shark! You could see it's shadow underneath her, adn I yelled to her. I said 'Jump and watch out!' She jumped and grabbed on to the pole, where I was leaning over and I tried to pull her up. The shark jumped out of the water and grabbed her and pulled her down under. That's like my worst dream! That's the only thing I'm most afraid of. Years ago, when I was showing off my bike and broke my right arm, it didn't scare me as much as the thought of sharks - and I did a 360 in the air and landed right on my arm! I'm generally not a scared kind of person. I try to be funny, but I'm not really funny that often - I just keep quiet a lot. I'm interested in girls, but it's hard to find a girl who doesn't just like me for what I do, but for what I am. I don't really test the girls, you just can tell. When I was in school, I used to come home from school with letters - this was shen I was really young. It was so funny, my mom kept all these letters that I came home with in my book bag! These girls, I can't remember how young we were, but they would write stuff. They could hardly even write their names, but they were writing 'I love you'! It was so funny in a sweet way! I was looking back on it, and they had like hearts all over the paper... My family keeps me humble though. I still have to clean my room and put the dishes in the sink and stuff. My room's got a lot of posters in it, my drum set, my bed, a VCR and a TV. It looks like an old 60"s room. I enjoy the times when I can get home and be with my family, but Backstreet Boys are my family now too - and we want to stay together!