Lance Bass

James Lance Bass (; born May 4, 1979) is an American singer, dancer, actor, podcaster, film and television producer. He grew up in Mississippi and rose to fame as the bass singer for the American pop boy band NSYNC. NSYNC's success led Bass to work in film and television. He starred in the 2001 film On the Line, which his company, Bacon & Eggs, also produced. Bass later formed a second production company, Lance Bass Productions, as well as a now-defunct music management company, Free Lance Entertainment, a joint venture with Mercury Records. After completion of NSYNC's PopOdyssey Tour, Bass moved to Star City, Russia, in a much publicized pursuit of a space tourism seat on a Soyuz space capsule. Bass was certified by both NASA and the Russian Space Program after several months of cosmonaut training and planned to join the TMA-1 mission to the International Space Station. However, after his financial sponsors backed out, Bass was denied a seat on the mission. In July 2006, Bass came out as gay in a cover story for People magazine. He was awarded the Human Rights Campaign Visibility Award in October 2006 and released an autobiography, Out of Sync, in October 2007, which debuted on the New York Times Best Seller list. Early life and education James Lance Bass was born in Laurel, Mississippi, to James Irvin Bass Jr., a medical technologist, and Diane (née Pulliam), a 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". 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.