As a member of one of the only boy bands with true longevity, Nick Carter has seen it all.
Born in Jamestown, New York, in 1980, the pop star relocated to Florida with his family when he was 4 years old. In less than a decade, his showbiz career began in earnest. After befriending Howie Dorough and AJ McLean in the early 1990s, Carter auditioned for the Backstreet Boys at age 12, and one year later, the group was officially formed with the addition of Brian Littrell and Kevin Richardson.
The boy band shot to fame in the mid-’90s with the release of their debut album, Backstreet’s Back. As the youngest member of the group, Carter quickly became a fan favorite and one of the band’s breakout vocal stars.
As the Backstreet Boys’ stars continued to rise, however, Carter began experiencing turmoil in his personal life. In January 2002, he was arrested in Florida and charged with one misdemeanor count of resisting/opposing a law enforcement officer without violence.
“Unfortunately, I didn’t learn from it,” the Dancing With the Stars alum wrote of the arrest in his 2013 memoir, Facing the Music and Living to Talk About It. “I just kept compounding my problems by continuing the same unacceptable behavior and messing up. No internal alarms went off for me, despite what the other guys in Backstreet said. I rolled on, repeating the same self-destructive pattern for quite a while longer.”
In March 2005, the “All I Have to Give” crooner was arrested in California and charged with driving under the influence. He later pleaded not guilty to the charge and was ordered to pay a $1,200 fine and complete a three-month alcohol treatment program.
Carter has been open about his struggles with drug and alcohol abuse over the years, revealing in his book that he was caught sneaking his first drink of alcohol at just 2 years old. “My parents always laughed at that,” he wrote. “I laughed too, for a while, and then I didn’t laugh at it anymore.”
While the first sip was an accident, the American Music Award winner went on to say that he began “drinking heavily” as a teenager before moving on to drugs at age 18. “I was gaining weight at the time, the color in my face was gone,” Carter recalled to Entertainment Tonight in November 2015. “I was able to look in the mirror at one point and said to myself: I don’t want to be that person that you turn on the television and they’re saying, ‘We feel really bad because he died.’”
In April 2016, the Dead 7 star said he was “completely 100 percent drug free,” adding that addiction was still a struggle for him. “It’s something that’s not easy,” he told Fox News at the time. “I still have to go to therapy. I still have to get to the bottom of the reason why I have resorted to alcohol.”
Keep scrolling for a look back at Carter’s ups and downs through the years: