Backstreet Mom: A Mother's Tale of Backstreet Boy AJ McLean's Rise to Fame, Struggle With Addiction, and Ultimate Triumph (8 page)

Our schedule became more intense, with all the hours of driving to
auditions, rehearsals and tapings. The school was very patient with Alex
and gave him work to take home whenever we thought he might fall
behind. Margie helped with that as well. Since she was one of his teachers, she kept me aware of what areas he needed help with before things
got out of hand. We made a good tutoring team for my son. Everyone
on the staff at Unity was supportive of Alex and his desire to keep working toward his dream. It was a blessing that he was in a private school
during that time.

My mom was also a great help in getting Alex to and from lessons on
those occasions when I had to work. We all did our part. My dad helped
Alex rehearse his lines at night if I was not there to do it.

Alex really lived a charmed life. Every time an audition came up, he
would at least make the final cut, if not get the part. And more than
once the casting director changed a role or added one so that Alex could
appear. That's how much he impressed people. Alex auditioned for a
horror film when he was eight. It was a low-budget independent production, so they hired several local people as extras. Alex auditioned for
the child lead in a flashback scene. The director was so impressed with
his reading that he cast him on the spot. He even made the adult lead
actor change his hair color to match Alex's!

It was quite some time before the word "rejection" ever entered our
vocabulary; but, as every performer knows, rejection and disappointment are as much a part of the business as are the ovations.

Alex's first disappointment came at age nine. After winning a pivotal
role in a film called Truth or Dare, he nailed his part as a young street
child with impressive clarity. And the amazing thing was that he never
spoke a line in the film. His character lived in an alley under the apartment window of the main character. The lead was a young girl who had
run away from home. She resorted to prostitution to pay the bills.

In large part, the story is told through Alex's eyes. In the end, Alex's
character dies alone after starving to death in an alleyway surrounded
by trashcans. The final scene of the film focused on his battered face
and glazed eyes. Even though I knew it was just acting, the scene was
too much for me to watch.

Unfortunately, the film was never released. Alex was crushed. The
fact that he never got to see the finished product was a real blow. I
managed to convince him
that it was only the first of
many life lessons that
would help to make him
stronger. My hope was that
I had paved the way for
him to understand the inevitability of disappointment.

At the Halloween party for
The King and I at the Burt
Reynolds Theater

My hopes were realized
when I saw how calmly he
faced the many rejections
that soon came his way, including the one thing that
he had his heart set on the
most: becoming a performer on the Mickey Mouse
Club.

Alex auditioned for
that show three times. We would be there for hours, but Alex would wait patiently with the hope
that his name would be called. As the day grew longer and the lines
grew shorter, his hopes would rise. He would tell me, "Mom, now it's
my turn." But each time we walked away with nothing to show for our
efforts, except exhaustion and disappointment. Alex was not discouraged. He never gave up. Every time he heard that a Disney audition
was coming to Florida he was ready to go.

After his third and final rejection at the age of twelve, the casting
agent approached us and reassured Alex that the reason he hadn't been
cast had absolutely nothing to do with his talent. It was just that at the
age of twelve, he was simply too old. When I asked what the problem
had been the previous years, he responded frankly that at that time Alex
was a bit too ethnic looking for what he needed in the show.

He commended Alex's tenacity and advised us to think about moving
to a larger city where there were more opportunities. He suggested Orlando and gave us names of contacts there. From what I was reading in the trade papers, Orlando was becoming "L.A. East." The casting director gave us a lot to consider.

Alex holding a fake razor blade in Truth or Dare, A Critical Madness

I had a house, a great job with a company I liked and friends that I
did not want to leave. Alex had been born and raised in South Florida,
so he, too, had ties. Then there was the matter of my mom and dad who
still lived with us. Would they come with us? Did they even want to
move? My dad worked for a good company and we were all pretty settled in. There was no guarantee of employment in Orlando, or even that
Alex would be any more successful there.

The truth was that Alex's career had stalled a bit. The last few auditions had been for parts in offbeat films that I knew would never see the
inside of a mainstream movie theater. After having acted in all of the
major theaters in southern Florida, Alex was ready for a change. He
wanted to take some serious acting lessons and try out for more challenging roles in both television and film. Alex was willing to take chances
as long as they were pointed in the direction of furthering his career. We
talked about him auditioning for roles on Broadway, but that seemed
just a bit too scary for me. I had never lived in a big city. The thought of
just going out there cold was more than I could handle.

We considered our other options. A few of the single moms that I had
been friendly with had moved to Los Angeles and we had kept in touch.
I called them and they encouraged us to move out there. My next step
was to talk to some of the agents we had come to trust. What was the
next logical step for Alex to take? Where did it seem his next big break
might be waiting? L.A. and New York were the overwhelming favorites.
My agent friends gave me names of contacts in both cities.

I was now more confused than ever. The thought of moving to Los
Angeles or New York scared me to death. After many sleepless nights
and countless family discussions, we decided to put our destiny in the
hands of fate. I put our house on the market to see what developed. Our
neighbor just happened to be a real estate agent, so I gave her the listing. We both agreed that with the market the way it was, it would probably take at least six months to sell. I even put the price up a bit high to
protect myself. Amazingly, the house sold the same day it went on the
market! Fate seemed to be giving us a nudge. The pressure was on.

We decided to move to Orlando. It was a good place to nurture Alex's
career, but it was not nearly as intimidating as Los Angeles or New York.

We had forged lifelong relationships that deeply affected us, so it was
hard to leave them behind, but I had made a commitment to my son
that we would move to a new city and fulfill our destiny.

MOM INSISTED THAT WE MOVE as a family so that she could help
Alex and me with whatever we needed. Dad had been working for a
while at a good job, but Mom convinced him to leave it and move with
us. Dad had never had a problem getting work, so she was sure that he
would find something in Orlando that would be just as good as what he
was leaving behind.

To tell you the truth, I was relieved that they wanted to move with
us. It was especially important for Alex. His grandparents were a huge
part of his everyday life. There was a strong bond among the three of
them that I was hesitant to sever. Also, we could continue to pool our
money and I would not have to find a job right away. I took a chance
quitting my job and moving to Orlando. I took one more when I decided to live on the money that I had made from the sale of my house. I
hoped that the money would give me a year to get Alex established in
his new town.

Mom and Dad helped with the general running of the house and
paid basic utility bills. I covered the rent and a few leftover personal
expenses. Fortunately, I was able to pay off most of my debts. That allowed me to concentrate on Alex's career and it gave me a jump on achieving my own goals of learning the show-business game. It was
really an excellent opportunity for both of us.

We found a cute townhouse on the north side of Orlando in a nice
community. It was set back from the main road and was accessible to
most parts of town. It was the summer of 1990 and Universal Studios
was preparing for opening day. The adventure was just beginning and
the excitement on my son's face was hard to miss.

Since school was out for the summer, Alex and I were able to spend
all our time researching the "whos, whats and wheres" of Orlando's entertainment community. Temporarily losing the distraction of a nineto-five job was one of the smartest things I ever did for my son. I would
never have been able to devote the hours necessary on a daily basis if I
had still been working. I became, for lack of a better word, Alex's "manager." That became my job seven days a week.

I set up a makeshift office in the back bedroom of our house and I
made up new resumes and press kits for my son. Headshots, press clippings and show reviews were copied and collated. The object was to
pack maximum information into the smallest amount of space. By this
point Alex's resume was pretty well-rounded. I just hoped Orlando would
agree.