When Hamilton town crier Ed Christopher’s your dad, a career in entertainment seems almost predestined.Twenty-one-year-old Nick Christopher recently beat out the competition to be cast as Tom Collins in the award-winning Broadway musical, ‘Rent’.He said the opportunity came through a friend in the business but he first became interested in acting through watching his dad in local pantomime productions.“I remember being like three years old and sitting on my mom’s lap in City Hall and watching my father in pantomimes like Robin Hood,” he recalled.“That’s when any interest I have in acting was sparked. That was my first introduction.”Mr Christopher describes his dad as “a larger-than-life personality”.“If it wasn’t for him I wouldn’t have come into acting,” he said.The young actor lived on the Island with his parents until age seven, when he moved to Boston with his mother.He studied at the Boston Conservatory and the Juilliard School but took a break from his studies to take part in the Tony Award-winning classic ‘In the Heights’. A friend, who was a musical director, told him about an audition for the role of Benny soon after, he got the part.Mr Christopher said: “The way my life has worked so far has been a bit of a miracle in the sense that it kind of has been almost a staircase each step builds on the other.“It turned out the producers for ‘In the Heights’ were the same producers for ‘Rent’, so they got a chance to see me work and they learned that I was a hard worker, as well as a good worker.”When that production closed in April, he was invited by the producers to audition for Rent. “I was very excited about it because it is one of my favourite shows,” he said.Rent tells the story of impoverished young artists as they struggle to survive in New York’s Lower East Side under the shadow of HIV/AIDS.It opened on Broadway in 1996 and has since received numerous accolades including a Pulitzer Prize and a Tony Award for Best Musical.Mr Christopher admitted he was nervous about auditioning for the role, but said his “head was a little blown up” due to past successes.He also figured if he didn’t get the part he could go back to Julliard in the autumn.“The way I look at auditions it’s not the be all and end all.“There are always options and I guess that is a way of keeping my nervous energy down.”He got a call the day after the audition saying that the part was his. Rehearsals started six weeks later, in June.“When I had got the part I really couldn’t believe it because the role is normally played by a much older man than myself.“Tom Collins is a philosophy professor so normally they cast someone in their 30s or 40s for the part.”He said the most rewarding part of his Broadway experience so far has been learning more about the original writer and composer Jonathan Larson.Mr Larson died in 1996, soon after ‘Rent’s’ official premiere in an off-Broadway theatre.According to Mr Christopher, he has since become “somewhat of a legend, a mythical musical theatre creator type”.“[Before I joined ‘Rent’] he didn’t really seem like a person; he seemed more like an idea to me. So being able to meet his family, mother, father and sister and close friends it turned him into a person.”He said performing in Rent has been challenging in the sense he must push himself to get into the emotional state of the character each night.Tom Collins is a philosophy professor who falls in love with a cross-dressing man both he and his love interest have AIDS.“The first act takes place in one night and it’s mostly all happy and a good time and everyone is celebrating life.“In the second act my lover ‘Angel’ ends up dying, so that journey of the character from an ultimate high to the low of the second act and that feeling of loss of this one person you have in the world that understands you who is now gone [is challenging].“The play is about finding out how to deal with such loss and that journey and that juxtaposition of both life and death is very hard, but rewarding in the sense that it feeds me every night.“That challenge is something I am always chasing. I look forward to it every night because it’s so hard and I never feel like I totally do it justice; partly because I have never experienced that and also because it gives me something to work towards every night.”He said it was more nerve-racking when his father was in the audience. He told The Royal Gazette: “There was this weird energy because I wanted to do my best, but still had to stay true to the story.“I looked forward to it more after the play when we sat down and ate something and just talked about it. I love hearing my dad’s thoughts on different scenes.“He has always been so supportive and I love talking to him about theatre because he’s so smart.”Mr Christopher said he felt truly blessed for the opportunity to take part in ‘Rent’ but was “still thirsty” for the next thing.“I want to keep on this upward crawl toward some sort of destination. I am always looking for a different sort of challenge.“I do eventually hope to break into the scene in Los Angeles and move into more TV and film. That is my ultimate goal because I want to get to the point in my career when I can pick and choose if I want to do a project.”