James Lance Bass is an American pop singer, dancer, actor, film and television producer, and author. He rose to fame as the bass singer for the American pop boy band NSYNC.
Background
James Lance Bass was born in Laurel, Mississippi, to James Irvin Bass, Jr., a medical technologist, and Diane (née Pulliam), middle school mathematics, English, and career discovery teacher. Along with his older sister, Stacy, Bass grew up in adjacent Ellisville, Mississippi, and was raised as a Southern Baptist. Bass has described his family as devoutly Christian and conservative and has said that his childhood was "extremely happy".
Education
As a young boy, Bass developed an interest in space, and at age 9 traveled to Cape Canaveral, Florida, with his father to watch his first live space shuttle launch. Of this experience, Bass said, "I was certain from then on that my future was to be involved with space." Shortly after, Bass attended space camp in Titusville, Florida, and aspired to attend college and study engineering, with the hope that he would one day work for NASA.
When Bass was 11 years old, his father was transferred to a different hospital, and the family moved to Clinton, Mississippi Bass began singing in his Baptist church choir, and was encouraged to audition for local performance groups by his childhood best friend, Darren Dale, the youngest child of former longtime Mississippi Insurance Commissioner George Dale. Bass joined the Mississippi Show Stoppers, a statewide music group sponsored by the Mississippi Agriculture and Forestry Museum, and the Attaché Show Choir, a national-award-winning competitive show choir group at Clinton High School. He was also a member of a seven-man vocal group named Seven Card Stud, which competed at state fairs and performed at several social and political events for Senator Trent Lott.
At Clinton High School, Bass was elected vice president of his junior class and has said that he performed well in math and science. However, Bass later stated that his primary focus during high school was singing, and when looking back, he remembers "hardly anything" about academia.
Career
In 1995, during his junior year of high school, Bass received a call from Justin Timberlake and his mother, Lynn Harless, who asked Bass if he would be interested in auditioning for the pop group NSYNC after the group's original bass singer, Jason Galasso, had quit. Timberlake's vocal coach (who had worked with Bass during his time as a Mississippi Show Stopper) recommended Bass as a replacement. Bass was accepted into the group after auditioning in front of the other band members and Lou Pearlman, and soon left school to move to Orlando, Florida, and rehearse full-time. Bass has said that he did not know how to dance before he joined NSYNC, and therefore found much of the group's choreography difficult to learn. According to an episode of VH1's Driven, Jan Boltz, president of BMG's German division, offered NSYNC a recording contract under the condition that they replace Bass, whose dancing, he felt, "wasn't at the same level as all the others." However, the other members of the group refused to accept the contract without Bass, and the group's manager, Johnny Wright, convinced Bolz that Bass's dancing would quickly improve. Bolz conceded, and the group soon moved to Munich, Germany to record their first album with BMG. 'N Sync began extensive touring in Europe, and Bass's mother quit her job to tour with the group as a chaperone, as Bass was still a minor.
After gaining significant notability in Europe, NSYNC was signed to American record label RCA in 1997. The group's first single, "I Want You Back" began receiving major radio play in the United States, and NSYNC soon found themselves becoming an "overnight sensation", a period which Bass describes in his autobiography as "the death of my own innocence". Along with increasing fame and recognition in the United States the band also experienced a highly publicized legal battle with Pearlman, due to what the group believed were illicit business practices on his part. NSYNC sued Pearlman and his record company, Trans Continental, for defrauding the group of more than 50% of their earnings, rather than his original promise of only receiving one-sixth of the profits. The group threatened to leave and sign with Jive Records, which prompted Pearlman and RCA to countersue NSYNC for $150 million US, citing breach of contract. The injunction was thrown out of court and, after winning back their earnings, NSYNC signed with Jive.
In March 2000, NSYNC released No Strings Attached, which became the fastest-selling record of all time, selling 1.1 million copies in its first day of release. In 2001, the group followed up with their Celebrity album, which scored the second highest first-week album sales ever, trumped only by the group's previous album. NSYNC went on to sell over 56 million records worldwide. In 2002, the group announced that they would be taking a "hiatus", during which Timberlake began to record solo material. 'N Sync has not recorded new material since, and Bass has stated that he feels the group has officially disbanded.
In 2007, Bass stated that he had faith Timberlake would return after six months off to record another album with NSYNC, and that he felt betrayed by Timberlake's 2004 decision to pursue his solo career instead. Bass has also said that he has little hope for a reunion, since Timberlake has "made it clear that he wouldn't be interested in discussing another album any time soon." Despite these statements, Bass has denied that he harbors any ill feelings towards Timberlake, saying: "At that time... it did feel like betrayal. I felt heartbroken. All these emotions went through me. Today, I’m really happy, and Justin and I are really great friends. I don’t hate him at all. And I understand what he was going through, and it was as hard for him as it was for any of us."
In 2000, Bass formed a music management company named Free Lance Entertainment, which was a joint venture with Mercury Nashville, a division of Mercury Records. Vowing to keep the company "a strictly family-run operation," Bass employed his parents and sister as talent scouts, and recruited childhood friend and aspiring country singer Meredith Edwards for the company's first release. Edwards began touring with NSYNC as an opening act in the fall of 2000, and Bass teamed up with MTV to hold a nationwide talent search for more artists later that year. However, Free Lance soon folded after disappointing sales of Edwards's debut album, Reach.
Bass guest-starred on the WB drama series 7th Heaven, playing Rick Palmer, a love interest for Beverley Mitchell's character, Lucy. The following year, while NSYNC was in the midst of recording Celebrity, Bass received his first starring role in the 2001 motion picture On The Line. Bass played Kevin, a man who falls in love with a woman on a Chicago train and begins a search to find her again. The film was produced by Bass's production company, A Happy Place (later renamed Bacon & Eggs), and featured appearances by Jerry Stiller, Al Green, Bon Jovi guitarist Richie Sambora, former WWE wrestler Chyna, and Bass's bandmates Timberlake, Kirkpatrick and Fatone, the latter in a major role. The film also featured a soundtrack which included previously unreleased songs by NSYNC and Britney Spears. Bass collaborated with Joey Fatone, Mandy Moore, Christian Burns and True Vibe (as the "On The Line Allstars") for the film's theme song, "On The Line".
Despite heavy marketing towards NSYNC teen fans, the film was a commercial failure, grossing only $4.2 million US domestically despite its $10 million US budget. The film, along with Bass's acting, was also poorly received by critics. Bass later said that he felt the film's success was greatly hindered by its release date, which came one week after the World Trade Center attacks of September 11, 2001. In his 2007 autobiography, Bass wrote, "That was it – our film was finished... once the country went to war, there was no way our film was going to be on anyone's top-priority list."
As a guest star in the 2013 Gravity Falls episode "Boyz Crazy", Bass plays in the boy band, Sev'ral Timez (which is a parody of NSYNC). In 2014, Bass guest starred on an episode of the Comedy Central series, Review, in which he visited space along with the show's lead character.
In 2015, Bass joined season two of The Meredith Vieira Show as a full-time contributing panelist.
Bass has been involved with a number of charities during his career. In 2001, Bass founded The Lance Bass Foundation, a non-profit organization that was designed to meet the health needs of low-income children. In 2003, Bass donated $30,000 US to establish the Amber Pulliam Special Education Endowment at The University of Southern Mississippi. The endowment is in honor of his younger cousin, Amber Pulliam, who has Down syndrome and was established to financially aid students from Mississippi's Pine Belt who plan a career in special education.
After 2005's Hurricane Katrina, Bass launched "uBid For Hurricane Relief", a celebrity auction to benefit victims of the hurricane, with uBid.com. Proceeds from the auction were split between the Child Welfare League of America, The Brett Favre Fourward Foundation, and Ashton Kutcher's RockWorks Foundation. Many of Bass's family members in Mississippi were directly affected by the hurricane. That same year, Bass appeared on an episode of Extreme Makeover: Home Edition with a donation to a Russian woman to save a camp for disabled children in Russia.
He has two dogs which he adopted from a rescue shelter, both of whom he posed in a PETA ad urging people to adopt rather than buy animals. In August 2007, Bass wrote a guest commentary for LOGO's "Visible Vote '08" blog, in which he expressed support for gay marriage. In September 2007, Bass participated in a series of GLAAD television advertisements promoting tolerance for the LGBT community. Bass has also been involved in fundraising for the Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network.
Membership
Bass is a member of the Environmental Media Association's board of directors. He has also been involved with Animal Avengers, Shannon Elizabeth's animal rescue organization.
Personality
Bass came out as gay in a cover story for People magazine on July 26, 2006. There had been considerable media speculation about his orientation due to numerous paparazzi snapshots of him at gay bars and nightclubs, most notably during the preceding Independence Day weekend in Provincetown, Massachusetts. Celebrity gossip blogger Perez Hilton had also been posting items on his website about Bass's orientation since September 2005, and New York gossip column Page Six ran a blurb on July 12, 2006, that reported a sighting of Bass at a gay bar with his then-boyfriend, Reichen Lehmkuhl. Bass's publicist, Ken Sunshine, chose to release the story exclusively to People magazine, who bumped actor Johnny Depp off that week's cover in favor of Bass.
Connections
Bass began dating painter and actor Michael Turchin in January 2011 and they became engaged in September 2013. They married on December 20, 2014 at the Park Plaza Hotel in Los Angeles. Former NSYNC bandmates Joey Fatone, Chris Kirkpatrick and JC Chasez were in attendance; Justin Timberlake, who was then headlining his The 20/20 Experience World Tour, was not present. The ceremonial event was filmed and televised in a special E! presentation: Lance Loves Michael: The Lance Bass Wedding that aired on February 5, 2015. Bass and Turchin were the first same-sex couple to exchange vows on cable television. After four years of marriage, the couple decided to extend their family and have a child with the help of a surrogate.