Nickolas Gene Carter (born January 28, 1980) is an American singer and a member of the vocal group Backstreet Boys. 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.
Carter was born in Jamestown, New York, where his parents, Jane Elizabeth (née Spaulding, previously Carter) and Robert Carter, owned a bar called the Yankee Rebel in Westfield, New York. He has English, Welsh, Irish, and German ancestry. 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. Carter's siblings include Leslie Carter (1986–2012) and Aaron Carter (1987–2022).
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. He also did several commercials, such as the Florida State Lottery and The Money Store, talent shows, and the Florida State Fair, auditioned for several acting roles in the late 1980s and early 1990s, and performed around Tampa Bay, FL. As a kid, he described himself as the weird kid, whose friends were the elderly, and was consistently picked on a lot until fourth grade, after his family moved to Apollo Beach, Florida. His first role was the lead role in the fourth-grade production of Phantom of the Opera at Miles Elementary School. His performance was so energetic that he received a standing ovation, with people crying in the audience at how wonderful the boy's voice projected. 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. He also made an 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".

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