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Nicholas Gene Carter "Nick"

Nick's parents, Bob and Jane Carter always maintained that their blond-haired, blue-eyed baby boy was a "firecracker" from the day he was born on January 28, 1980 -- in the same Jamestown, New York, hospital as legendary comedienne Lucille (I love Lucy) Ball! Even as a toddler, "Little Nicky" was a born entertained. His family gladly tells tales of their baby boy, clad only in diapers, bustin' a move on the dance floor of the family club. "It was a lounge called the Yankee Rebel, which my father and Grandfather both owned -- it was a small place," Nick recalled in an interview with SuperTeen. "We had a little dance floor at the Yankee rebel, and my dad used to be a DJ and play records. When I was real small, I used to get up there in my diapers and dance around. I have pictures of me with headphones on that were bigger than my face. I was just a little chunk; everybody used to call me Charlie Brown."
At any rate, the Carters knew very early on that Nick loved to perform, loved to make people smile and clap as he sang and danced. Soon, a new addition to the Carter family was clapping along with Nick's "fans." That was sister B.J., who was born when Nick was two. Those times in the warm and loving country home on Webber Road held happy memories for Nick, but when he was almost six years old, his parents decided to move down to Florida and start a new business.
"They packed up their old Cadillac El Dorado and loaded all our stuff into a little trailer," Nick continued in his SuperTeen interview. "So we made it to Tampa, Florida and we moved into our first house. It was a retirement home -- that's where my dad started working. We lived there for maybe a year. It was big enough for sixteen people, but we built on to it." When Nick was about seven, the show biz bug bit and he even remembers entertaining the residents at his parents' retirement home. "I'd come in and sing for them," he told Live & Kicking magazine. "It was kind of sad 'cause I had a few favorite residents there, but they soon passed away." As Nick was performing to larger and larger audiences, his family was growing by leaps and bounds, too. His sister, Lesley, and fraternal twins, Aaron and Angel, were born down in Florida. In the fourth grade, Nick landed the lead in a production of Phantom of the Opera. He entered a lot of talent shows and recalls one in which he tried an impersonation of Elvis -- leg shake and all! "I had to try," he told Live & Kicking. "I'm not really a dancer though. I was always so nervous doing those things. You gotta remember, I was really young when I started doing that stuff." But he was doing something right and was soon the featured vocalist at the Tampa Bay Buccaneer pre-game shows. This NFL gig lasted two years, and then when Nick was twelve, he won the 1992 New Original Amateur Hour TV show. Local commercial gigs came quickly after that -- Floridians may remember little Nick promoting the Money Store and the Florida State Lottery. Nick kept himself busy performing and auditioning at local Tampa and Orlando events, and though he was only in junior high, he made friends with two older guys he kept running into at the same gigs -- A.J. McLean and Howie Dorough. The three started passing the long waits at auditions and performances by harmonizing together. They started kicking around the idea of forming a new group, and when Nick was offered what many would consider the chance of a lifetime, a gig at Disney World, he had to make a decision. It was easy, Nick said no thanks to Mickey and Minnie and yes to working with A.J. and Howie. And that was the birth of the Backstreet Boys! But what about Nick offstage? Who's his best friend? What are some of his favorite childhood memories? Just ask him -- he'll be glad to tell you all about it. When the Carter family moved to Tampa, Nick made a whole new group of friends, but when he was about eleven or twelve years old, he became best buds with a boy named Brent. "We used to always hang out together," Nick told a Scholastic magazine writer. "We used to get in trouble all the time -- not bad trouble! There was this big pond where we lived -- we used to go fishing there. And I remember one time Brent and I sneaked into this shed that was there and took some shovels out. We started digging in the lawns and everything, and we left the shovels there and just took off! We were bad!" Of course, Nick grew out of that mischievous stage, and after his love of performing, he developed an interest in water sports, especially scuba diving. "I've been a scuba diver since I was twelve," he told 16 magazine. "When I was fifteen I got my open water permit -- that's a regular diving license. Before that I had a junior permit that allowed me to only go seventy- five feet deep. With an open water permit there are no restrictions...My dad is a diving instructor, so he was always with me when I went deep. With an open permit, you can go wreck diving, night diving, and deep sea diving. When Nick turned seventeen, he also got a boat. "I keep it berthed on the canal next to my house that leads to the Florida coast," he revealed in an online interview. "I fill the engine with gas and just head out to the sea. The Florida Keys are the greatest stretch of ocean in the world with lots of small islands you can stop off at. Many a time, I've played football on the beach with my brothers and sisters. A lot of times I go out on the bot alone. Being on my own, with just the silence of the sea, is such an escape from the constant screaming of fans on a Backstreet Boys tour. It's something I need to do just get away from it all. To me, the Florida Keys is paradise on Earth!"
Find other members of Backstreet Boys: Kevin - Howie - AJ - Brian

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