Timberlake turns away from spotlight
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Enlarge By Dan MacMedan, USA TODAY

SexyBack to laid-back: Justin Timberlake is the voice behind the king as Artie in Shrek the Third, opening May 18. After his high-profile romances and hit CDs, Timberlake is happy to stand behind the animated character.



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Reluctant king: Shrek (voice of Mike Myers), left, persuades Artie (Justin Timberlake) to travel to Far, Far Away in Shrek the Third.




By Anthony Breznican, USA TODAY
At a time when everybody wants to be Justin Timberlake, he just wants to be anybody else.
From the music he's writing for other recording artists to his new focus on acting, the pop-R&B singer/songwriter is trying on other voices, other personalities and, in the case of the computer-animated Shrek the Third, a different body entirely.


PHOTOS: Check out Mr. JT over the years

"I've had a good share of the spotlight for a while. I don't feel like I need too much of it right now," Timberlake says, sitting on a hotel balcony in Los Angeles, where hummingbirds hover over a scarlet bougainvillea garden. It's a serene spot in the heart of the city.

When talking about himself, his career and his high-profile romances, Timberlake, 26, can be prickly and tense, particularly over such topics as this year's hair-chopping/rehab fiasco of ex-girlfriend Britney Spears or Shrek the Third teaming him with his other famous ex, Cameron Diaz.


He co-wrote Okay and Get Out for Macy Gray's latest album, Big, crafted Rehab for Rihanna's Good Girl Gone Bad, which arrives in June, and collaborated on a country tune, The Only Promise That Remains, for Reba McEntire's duets collection in the fall. Writing in their voices liberated something in himself.

"I want to write country music, because that's where I grew up — Tennessee. Soul music … I want to be involved in hip-hop. And sometimes I feel the only way to really express all those different sides, even just for myself, is through different people."

In movies, Timberlake has worked consistently to vandalize the image of clean-cut precision he spent years establishing in music.

In last year's crime tragedy Alpha Dog, he was a dim-bulb street thug who helps kidnap a boy to reclaim a drug debt, and in this year's Black Snake Moan, he played a panic-attack-prone soldier whose woman is pathologically unable to be faithful to him.

These side projects playing dopes and losers come at a time when Timberlake is practically the definition of en vogue, from the ubiquitous radio play of SexyBack and What Goes Around to the two Grammys he won in February for the album FutureSex/LoveSounds.

He's on magazine covers, shaping fashion with his blend of prepster hip-hop style, and is expanding his fan base to more sophisticated listeners at the same time he's being splashed with green slime on the Nickelodeon Kids' Choice Awards.

But for now, Timberlake says, he's feeling a lack of inspiration for his own songwriting. "To write for myself, I definitely have to recharge my battery. I can't just pump out 20 more songs and expect them all to be What Goes Around. I'm going to be on tour all the way into the fall.

"So it's been nice to crawl into my little hole on the tour bus and just gig," he says. "And I'd like to do a lot more films."

Starting small, then 'Shrek'

As brash as his film choices are, the movies have not been box-office successes. He learned to start small with colorful supporting roles after taking on too much as a crusading reporter in 2005's Edison. The movie went straight to video.

Shrek the Third, which opens May 18, will attach a sure-fire blockbuster to his filmography.

"The small pictures he did weren't major hits, but that hasn't hurt him because he didn't get bad reviews for them," says James Robert Parish, author of Hollywood Songsters, about musicians who become actors. Timberlake eventually could succeed where others, such as Madonna, Mariah Carey or even Spears, have failed, thanks to — of all things — his boy-band experience, Parish says.

"When a diva is doing a stage performance, they are in control, and the focal is on them. When they share scenes, few can interact and volley back and forth. He came out of a group, and they learned how to do a performance, to make a little production out of each song. That gives him some of the acting chops he needs."

Timberlake's role in Shrek the Third is a young King Arthur (known to his classmates as "Artie"), a luckless outcast who is picked on even by the geeks. Shrek (Mike Myers) and Donkey (Eddie Murphy) venture to his medieval fairy-tale high school to recruit him as heir to the crown in Far, Far Away, which is the villain-besieged hometown of Princess Fiona (Diaz).

"Artie's sort of a nerd," Timberlake says. "He is told his whole life that he's a loser, so he doesn't believe in himself, doesn't believe he can be the king. He's got to get confidence. He's not cool, you know?"

Timberlake says he relates to the geek, which sounds unlikely coming from Mr. I'm-Bringing-Sexy-Back.

"I have my moments," he insists. "We can all relate to adolescence, when nobody's cool. I used to get picked on all the time. I had terrible acne, weird hair. My arms were too long."

OK. But America watched him grow up, starting on The Mickey Mouse Club in the early 1990s. Then in the late '90s came the boy-band 'N Sync.

Timberlake's awkward stage, he says, conveniently took place during the few years when legions of fans weren't looking.

"People get images in their mind, and they think that's what somebody is," he says. "I went to school up until high school, I didn't have a normal life, but up until that point … hey, I was just a kid in school. We can all relate to that."

Of his ex in 'Shrek'

Timberlake hates talking about his personal life. But because he dated Diaz and she is such an integral part of the Shrek franchise, the fact that they're in the same movie — if only as animated voices — is bound to get the attention of moviegoers.

"I don't say anything about that," Timberlake says. His face tenses. A silence passes. "I'm tired of people waiting for me to say something. Like I'm going to say something bad, or something hopeful, or say something in this direction or that direction."

He points out that actors who do cartoon voices record alone, and the dialogue exchanges are pieced together later. And their animated alter egos don't even meet onscreen until the end of the movie.

Still, when a major singer comes in to work on a movie franchise launched by his girlfriend, some element of the personal relationship is bound to be an influence.

Diaz, who earns a reported $10 million-plus for the Shrek films, said in a 2005 interview, "It's pretty much like hitting the lottery." So did she come home and say: "You've got to get into Shrek. It's a gold mine"?

"You're funny," he says, sounding anything but amused. Then the smile he's trying to hold back comes out.

It was DreamWorks' Jeffrey Katzenberg who recruited him for Shrek the Third after catching his first appearance as host of Saturday Night Live in 2003.

But Timberlake acknowledges the obvious: Part of the appeal was to work on a project involving his girlfriend.

"The fact that she's in it is still exciting to me. She's an amazing woman and an amazing actress, and everybody in the film is so good at these characters. I hold a huge amount of respect for everyone in the film, including her."

Even so, Katzenberg says, he felt compelled to get Diaz's blessing. "Out of courtesy, I said to Cameron, 'You know, this is something we're considering doing. I like the guy's work a lot. On the other hand, I don't want to mix things up here. Life is already confusing enough for all of us,' " he says. "She was completely supportive: 'If that's something you want to do, then great. Obviously I'm a fan and admirer, too.' "

Though their romantic relationship has ended, the two are still friendly. Timberlake says they're not mortal enemies.

He wishes Britney well

He also has positive things to say about Spears, whose public meltdown — shaving her head in the window of a beauty shop and a stint in rehabilitation — has been inescapable.

"Everybody is rooting for her, and that's a good thing. I'm on that bandwagon, too. I don't want to see anybody unhappy. You can call me a hippie," he says.

It goes back to perceptions.

"People take photos in their mind of how people are, and that's their image. But people are more complex than that. There's a lot more, I'm sure, going on for (Spears) than is being alluded to. But to me, if you're a recording artist, you make a great record, and people want to hear it. That's plain and simple. All of this hoopla that everybody creates — you make a great record, or you do a great film, and everybody kind of shuts up about it."

Does his aversion to discussing these matters influence his songwriting? The 2002 hit Cry Me a River widely is interpreted as mocking Spears, even featuring a look-alike actress in the video.

"That song was what it was, and I just put it out there," he says, neither confirming nor denying the popular interpretation.

But he says reality is not a prerequisite in music any more than it is in movies.

"I write about what I know, but I also write about things that are just fantasies in my head. I don't really think I brought sexy back. It just seemed like something catchy to say. I don't really think of myself that way. It's just fun. It's like acting, because you create a character in your mind, and you run with it."

In his quest to become a movie star, how does he feel about the possibility of seeing his life onscreen, à la Ray or Walk the Line?

Timberlake laughs again. "That'd be a terrible movie."

Is he under the impression that "What Goes Around" is a good song?

Btw, so much for Madonna's new album. JT is out of ideas.
[Edited 5/1/07 5:59am]

^ thank god! I like some of his music but I can't stand him as a person at all and think that when you take away the neptunes and timbaland, we're left with nothing

DarlingDiana said:

thank u

He hit the wall after the first NSYNC album.

Fury said:

Hmmmmm 20 songs and he's losing creativity?.....I wonder what a certain purple man would have to say about that.....

Are any of his songs credited solely to him as far songwriting goes?

LightOfArt said:

No, yet he sure references himself in a lot of "his" songs.

I couldn't bother to read this whole thing. Could someone give me the 1 or 2 sentence version?

GangstaFam said:

Sure! Justin's a punkass whiner with no talent!

Nothing I didn't already know!

DarlingDiana said:

Madonna must have drain Justin.

DarlingDiana said:

I certainly am. I love that song.