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AND IT STONED ME Caught in an infamous prank on Punk'd. Timberlake says his glassy-eyed appearance reflects his lifestyle at the time of Justified

And right now, it seems he can do no wrong. While the ''Old Friends'' sketch was cut from SNL before broadcast, the onetime Mouseketeer still managed to create a singular pop culture moment on the show. ''D --- in a Box,'' a spoof R&B music video in which Timberlake and SNL writer-performer Andy Samberg croon about their gift-wrapped manhoods, has become an Internet sensation, exceeding even the spectacular success of Samberg's previous ''Lazy Sunday.'' The video, whose song Timberlake helped compose, is sharply satirical — but it's also sophomoric enough to serve as a reminder that, despite being a showbiz veteran, the ''SexyBack'' star is still four years away from celebrating his 30th birthday.

''He was born to do SNL,'' Samberg says. ''He's got charm and acting ability, but he also has comic timing. And then, when you start throwing singing into the mix, it's like, Oh man, you can make the dumbest joke sound great! And he has no problem looking like an ass. None whatsoever.''

''I liked him a lot,'' Samberg concludes. ''He's a silly man.''

The preteen Justin Timberlake, whose parents split when he was just a toddler, was anything but silly. ''I was a tortured young dude — to the point of rage,'' he says between mouthfuls of chicken paillard at Manhattan eatery Pastis. ''I literally walked around like this...'' Timberlake stares down at his plate, the star's face scrunching up into a dark glower before reconfiguring back to its usual friendly, open demeanor. ''My mom makes jokes. She goes, 'It's no shock to me you're obsessed with sneakers because that's the only thing you looked at for the first 10 years of your life.' And if I couldn't do something really well when I was a kid, I wouldn't do it at all. I wanted everything to be perfect.''

That drive carried over to the emergence of 'N Sync. ''I had so much power,'' Timberlake remembers. ''We were playing stadiums, and I could say, 'Hey, we should fly down!' And suddenly people are building rigs for us to fly down on. We had a blast doing it, [but] I was really a perfectionist.''

But by the time he went solo to record Justified, the committed perfectionist seemed like he couldn't quite hold it together. In fact, he had become a bit of a stoner. Timberlake has previously admitted that Justified was constructed in something of a marijuana haze. That partly explains, Timberlake says, his somewhat bewildered 2003 appearance on Ashton Kutcher's MTV prank show, Punk'd. Timberlake, who was tricked into believing that his possessions were being taken away by the tax authorities, seemed totally devastated — for a minute there, he was known as The Man Ashton Kutcher Almost Made Cry.

''I'll give you a little hint on that Punk'd thing,'' Timberlake says. ''That was back in my first-album creative days. That's why I looked the way I did, if that makes any sense to you.''

Can I confirm what you're saying here?

''I don't give a s---.''

Were you stoned?

''Incredibly,'' he laughs. ''Yeah, that was a trippy experience. That was why I was completely glassyeyed.... As a matter of fact, I was like, Okay, I got to stop doing this.... I don't do that anymore.''


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