Nick Lachey: Snapshot

Name
Nick Lachey
Date of Birth
November 09, 1973
Birth Place
Harlan, Ky.
When Nick Lachey married a relatively unknown pop singer named Jessica Simpson, he had already sold seven million albums as a member of 98 Degrees. But it was MTV's Newlyweds that seared him and then-wife into pop-culture consciousness.

On the reality show, Lachey played the endearingly patient husband to Simpson's blundering blonde. Opening their marriage to viewers and tabloids, Lachey and Simpson were persistently nagged by breakup reports, and the day before Thanksgiving 2005, the couple announced the end of their three-year union.

Though Lachey refrained from public mudslinging, he didn't shy away from putting his feelings to song in his hit album, What's Left of Me – before moving on with TV personality Vanessa Minnillo.

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Nick Lachey: Five Fun Facts

  1. Nick Lachey eased on down the road as the Lion in his high school's production of The Wiz; he also performed in Peter Pan with classmate and future MTV reality star Carmen Electra.
  2. Who is Nick Lachey's celebrity crush? "I won't call it a crush, because I believe in self-preservation, but I think Charlize Theron is stunningly beautiful," Lachey admitted to PEOPLE.
  3. Nick Lachey belongs to Sigma Alpha Epsilon. Founded in 1856 at the University of Alabama in Tuscaloosa, the fraternity also counts David Spade and Fred Savage among its members.
  4. Nick Lachey does have an addiction: Starbucks. "Sugar-free vanilla latte. I've definitely become dependent on coffee," the pop singer says to PEOPLE. Lachey also goes nuts over pumpkin spice.
  5. Nick Lachey and Jessica Simpon's 6,500-sq.-ft. five-bedroom Mediterranean-style home in Calabasas, Calif. – the setting for many classic Newlyweds moments – was sold to Malcolm in the Middle actor Justin Berfield, when the couple divorced in 2006.

Nick Lachey: Biography

1992

Nick Lachey

Competitive Streak

Inspired by sibling rivalry, Lachey taps his inner performer to get into a creative arts high school. He says to PEOPLE: "The only reason [brother Drew and I] even went to the same school was because my whole family was bragging and talking about how proud they were of Drew for getting in. Blah, blah, blah. I got sick of hearing about it, so I went down and auditioned too. I had no intention of going. I just wanted to prove I could get in."

1995

Nick Lachey

Making the Band

Joining fellow Ohioan Jeff Timmons, Lachey, who has been studying sports medicine at Ohio's Miami University, decides to leave college for L.A. to form the band that eventually becomes 98 Degrees. High school pal Justin Jeffre and Lachey's younger brother Drew complete the quartet.

1997

Nick Lachey

July

Boy Band Mania

98 Degrees bags a Top 20 hit with "Invisible Man" off their self-titled debut album. "It's all very surreal, just a wild thing for us," Lachey tells The Cincinnati Enquirer. "I mean, I never in a million years thought that girls would look at us like that. But it's all very flattering." By the end of 1998, boy band mania is in full swing! Their album 98 Degrees and Rising spawns the Top 10 hit "Because of You."

Read More on Nick Lachey's Life

Photo Credits

Top Left: Simon Upton/JBGPHOTO

BIOGRAPHY (top to bottom): Classmates Yearbook Archives; 20th Century FOX/Everett

Edited by Janet Mock

Celebrity Central