dean payne

From the moment Dean Ronald Payne was born into his Druid Hills mansion his future was set in stone. His play dates would consist of reading the most advanced children books in itchy oxford sweaters and constricting polo shirts. Dean would be pushed in front of children two years older than him so his mother, Margaret Kirkus, could weasel her way into the gossip of the PTA groups. Instead of playing with bugs, and making mud pies, Dean was forced to share organic snacks with children that were trained from an early age to only take interest in higher learning. With every possible opportunity for fun with a science kit, came a learning experience he couldn't quite grasp.

The only truly freeing experience his mother let him indulge in was singing in the car during their weekend trips around the neighborhood. It was then she would learn her son sang in perfect harmony to the radio, but she overlooked his talent and took it for a hobby, and so did Dean. Margaret knew her husband Ronald had big plans for Dean, and it didn't involve a creative track. Instead he was expected to attend the best preparatory school from K to 8, fall in love with someone that had a trust fund by 15, and be made partner of his father's law firm. Unlike the homes in their cul-de-sac suggested, Dean's story was far more complicated and less pristine.

Defiant from the first smear of his own crap on the wall, there was nothing that gave Dean more joy than to create chaos in a stifling environment. While he did attend those stuffy “play dates” at 5, by the end of the day he was practically pushed out of the neighbor’s house from his unruly behavior. His sweater off, shoelaces untied and hair knotted with glue, and to top it off his embarrassed mother was in toe. His private school education was a frustration for everyone in the Payne household. Dean's time there was supposed to be simple, but it was challenging for him to concentrate. In social circles, he was officially dubbed as a little hell raiser. To Margaret’s horror, Dean was the kid all of the mothers warned each other about, and soon there was a plethora of excuses about why Dean wasn’t invited to birthday parties and regular after school activities. They were shunned, and even more horrifying to Margaret, her defiant son was thrilled, even giddy.

By first grade teachers would argue who would take him the following year on their roster. Everyone had agreed that he wasn't a bad kid, just restless. Soon it became glaringly obvious that his failing grades weren't the results of someone simply bored. With the recommendation of his teacher, along with a two hour counseling session for Margaret the school had Dean tested. As suspected, Dean was diagnosed with several learning disabilities that would make it difficult for him to stay. Concerned and slightly embarrassed, Margaret pleaded with the Principal to keep him and promised to get Dean the right assistance. For Ronald this early disappointment was the tipping point. He could skid over the fact that his son had zero interest in sports, but feeling helpless by his son's disabilities weren't just roadblocks -- they were severed ties that he needed to free himself of completely so he wouldn't feel pain or failure. Unfortunately, this resulted in little to no emotional support for Margaret or Dean, but since he was paying for extra care he felt like he was doing his part. Although Dean didn't understand what was going on at the time, he did feel different, and always felt the void from his father's neglect.

Despite Dean not fitting into social circles or in school, his mother was relentless, and still had a taste for attention. She thought back to the days when people would stop on the street to stare at baby doll looks of the boy with the piercing blue eyes. How the mothers would coo over his French couture outfits. She decided to gain respect around the neighborhood she would fly herself and Dean back and forth from Georgia to New York to modeling agencies. They would somehow be liked and appreciated by someone. It only took six swipes of her American Express card before Dean got signed to a modeling agency and started his career as a print and commercial model, advertising hot wheels, pound puppies and several hundreds of designer clothes for kids. The mothers were all the same and judged each other in waiting rooms, but Dean ate the attention up. It was attention that his father wouldn’t give him, and freedom that his mother never rewarded him with -- freedom to be a kid in a very adult world. Being away from their stifling origins had done wonders for Dean’s mother. She started to dote on him in a different way and listened to all Dean's zany stories from different modeling jobs, and even laughed at his jokes. Plus, long plane rides meant a whole new education in music which he took to at an alarmingly fast rate. He might have not excelled in the classroom, but he could recognize octaves over times tables.

The more Dean’s mother let him be, the more he started to explode with his goofy humor and sarcasm. Little did Dean know it was a smart ass remark that would catapult him into stardom and change his place in life. It was a passing remark Dean had made to his then agent that made him mention the transition from modeling into acting to Dean's mother. It was all she needed to hear to get the wheels turning. Two months after, Dean beat out hundreds of kids for the role of Kevin McCallister in Home Alone. It meant the world to his mother, and for Dean it was a dream job, playing around with adults all day long. By then he was one failing grade away from getting kicked out of his prep school, so Dean's mother wagered with the Principal, insisting that a joint curriculum of classroom learning and private tutoring would do Dean wonders. With the exposure Dean would give the school, the powers that be reluctantly agreed.

Things were quiet after filming for Home Alone ended, but when the film came out their family's life changed forever. Dozens of casting directors wanted their hands on the smart-ass precocious kid. Since his father couldn’t leave his practice behind, Dean and his mother lived in Los Angeles on the weekdays auditioning and on the weekends they would come back home to Georgia. By then Dean had a basic understanding of remedial English and his photographic memory hid everything else.

Although he had the opportunity to take on more projects after Home Alone came out Dean's mother wanted him to focus on school until the idea of a sequel came along. Things were quiet after filming of the sequel ended, and they thought they had just stumbled into luck, until they heard about an open call audition in Orlando, Florida for the Mickey Mouse Club. By then his interest in music was full blown and it just seemed like the perfect mix, so Dean and his mother went past the cattle call with the help of his agent's pushy hand. Dean became one out of a handful of kids picked for the new season of the show. The only downside was spending school on his off months in Georgia which was a horrible experience. After the show was cancelled coming back to a different reality was jarring. All of his friends were his co-stars, or adults, and being behind in class made him self-conscious. To cope Dean decided he would take on a class clown role, and started to adopt a certain cadence and flavor to his tone of voice. Coming into his own as a teenager was awkward enough but his peers were unbearable because of their silver spoon upbringing. He sounded too black, he was too short, he was a wigga, he walked like a fag – these were daily observations by his classmates. At that point he felt burnt out, and on top of that he was the target of mean-spirited rumors about being difficult, to questions of his sexuality.

After the cancellation sunk in, and life at home wasn't getting any better, Dean's mother was determined to escape Georgia and flew out often with Dean for auditions. It was obvious that no one was protecting him and the constant flying back and forth was wearing thin on him. His family life was painted as an unstable one, his mother as a money hungry villain, his father as an unavailable alcoholic and then there was Dean, who was starting to feel suffocated by his representation telling him what roles to go out for. It became too much to carry on his shoulders, so he decided to quit.

He had plans of going to his grandfather for advice until he got the most unexpected call of his life. A man named Lou Pearlman called Dean notifying him that Disney passed along his audition tape from The Mickey Mouse Club. The friendly man that advertised himself as the guy behind The New Kids on The Block called Dean to audition for a special music project he was putting together. His agent threatened to drop him for good if he took the audition, and his mother was against it, so with that Dean defiantly auditioned just to prove a point. After all was said and done, Pearlman had convinced Dean to emancipate himself, and at the time it made perfect sense if he wanted to give this an actual shot. He was the third member to join The Beats.

Making fast friends with the other boys, the five became brothers and it was a sense of community that he had missed. Still, Dean didn't think anything of it, and thought maybe they would put out a few singles and that would be that. Boy bands weren't selling, but he was willing to do anything to escape the acting world and shed his old image. It was the hardest thing he had ever done in his life but it paid off.

By the time he got the chance to breathe, it was 2000 and he was in the middle of being the shining star in a band that broke a world record by selling 2.8 million records in a day with No Strings Attached. The boy who loved the attention from the girls had turned into a young man overnight with an enormous fan base. By 2001 his talent manager was telling him that the boy bands were dying out again and he should think of his solo career. Dean refused the idea, but little by little he found himself yearning to have his own creative control in the studio, and he felt that his own musical interests were changing with top 40. Everything changed with what he would call the second most important phone call of his life. He picked up and on the other line was his old friend Michael Jackson, trying to convince him to go solo. Dean slowly began to realize that maybe this was something he needed to do to find himself as an individual. Eventually he had to break away, but promised he would come back after the short hiatus was over, however no one could predict his first solo album would have received such a response. For Dean he took the opportunity and went with his gut. It was another round of having to prove himself to people. He ended up standing on his own feet and felt very much invincible. That feeling stopped after he found himself in the middle of a Super Bowl controversy.

The man who could barely ever take anything seriously, had millions of people to apologize to over something he couldn't control, and he couldn't take it. Dean briefly put recording his second album on hold to see if he could dive back into films. He was pretty confident about it, too confident, and to his surprise Hollywood had forgotten about him, and there was no way they were letting him into their "exclusive club." There were no meetings to be had, no auditions to stumble into. Instead he had to work himself back up but as an adult actor, which was an extremely difficult challenge for him. Gravitating towards the challenge, Dean worked his hardest and visited his old agency and was signed with someone who actually believed in him, even if he couldn’t put any money into Dean. If anything took him a long way in the business it was his natural confidence and his determination to tackle anything he set his sights on. Relying on his natural comedic timing, Dean eased back into acting with a small role in Mr. & Mrs. Smith and a co-starring role in She's The Man before transitioning into gritty material with Alpha Dog. By then Dean felt like he didn't have to pick acting or music, so he did them both until he became uninspired by music. Dean moved on to greener pastures after his second album and tour were through, and crafted his attitude about his career around the essence of Frank Sinatra’s image, a singing man, with a sizable acting career -- a true entertainer.

Despite being a song and dance man Dean yearned to push himself past his abilities. It was something he had learned to do from fighting through school, and something he picked up from his grandfather. The boy who felt limited still existed but as far as acting was concerned his own perception of himself somewhat changed in 2010 when he landed a role in Buried. It was a dream project and one of the most organic experiences, that it scared him. It wasn't "putting on a show" or "entertaining." Dean found himself out of his depth, but he knew that feeling and went with it. After that he maintained his best in show appearance but felt like the door was open for other opportunities. Just when he hit his groove in acting, the itch to start creating music sprang up in 2012, being a natural workaholic he worked himself around the clock and surprised everyone with a huge turn for "The 20/20 Experience."