Justin Randall Timberlake (born January 31, 1981) is an American singer, songwriter, and actor. He is one of the world’s best-selling music artists, with sales of over 88 million records. Timberlake is the recipient of numerous awards and accolades, including ten Grammy Awards, four Primetime Emmy Awards, three Brit Awards, nine Billboard Music Awards, the Contemporary Icon Award by the Songwriters Hall of Fame, and the Michael Jackson Video Vanguard Award. According to Billboard, he is the best performing male soloist in the history of the Mainstream Top 40.

Born and raised in Memphis, Tennessee, he appeared on TV shows as a child, before rising to prominence in the late 1990s as one of the two lead vocalists and youngest member of NSYNC, which eventually became one of the best-selling boy bands of all time. Timberlake’s debut solo album, Justified (2002), yielded his first solo hit singles, “Cry Me a River” and “Rock Your Body”. His critically acclaimed second album, FutureSex/LoveSounds (2006), debuted atop the US Billboard 200 and spawned three consecutive Billboard Hot 100 number-one singles – “SexyBack” (featuring Timbaland), “My Love” (featuring T.I.) and “What Goes Around… Comes Around”. Established as a solo artist worldwide, his first two albums both exceeded sales of 10 million copies. Subsequently, Timberlake collaborated on a string of successful songs, including The Lonely Island’s viral hit “Dick in a Box”, which became one of the most-viewed YouTube videos at the time,[3] and his fourth US number-one single, Timbaland’s “Give It to Me”.

From 2008 through 2012, Timberlake put his music career on hiatus and focused on his acting career, holding starring roles in the films The Love Guru (2008), The Social Network (2010), Bad Teacher (2011), Friends with Benefits (2011), and In Time (2011). He resumed his music career in 2013 with his third and fourth albums, The 20/20 Experience and The 20/20 Experience – 2 of 2; both albums topped the Billboard 200, with the former becoming the best-selling album of the year and spawning the top three singles “Suit & Tie” and “Mirrors”. Timberlake also voiced Branch in the DreamWorks Animation’s Trolls franchise (2016–2023); the soundtrack for the first film included his fifth US number-one single, “Can’t Stop the Feeling!”, which earned him an Academy Award nomination. His fifth studio album, Man of the Woods (2018), became his fourth number-one album in the US. Supported by two top ten singles, “Filthy” and “Say Something” (featuring Chris Stapleton), it concluded 2018 as the sixth best-selling album of the year.

Justin Randall Timberlake was born on January 31, 1981, in Memphis, Tennessee, the son of Janet Lynn (Bomar) Harless and Charles Randall Timberlake, a Baptist church choir director. Timberlake has two half-brothers, Jonathan and Stephen, from Charles’ second marriage to Lisa Perry. His half-sister Laura Katherine died shortly after birth in 1997, and is mentioned in his acknowledgments in the album NSYNC as “My Angel in Heaven”.

His family circle includes several musicians; his grandfather introduced him to music from country music artists like Johnny Cash and Willie Nelson. Performing as a child, Timberlake sang country and gospel music: at the age of 11, he appeared on the television show Star Search, performing country songs as “Justin Randall”. By that time, he began listening to rhythm and blues musicians from the 1960s and 70s, such as Al Green, Stevie Wonder and Marvin Gaye, and he had listening sessions with his father of studio albums by the Eagles and Bob Seger.

In 1993 and 1994, he was a Mouseketeer on The All-New Mickey Mouse Club, where his castmates included future girlfriend and singer Britney Spears, future tourmate Christina Aguilera, future bandmate JC Chasez, and future movie actors Ryan Gosling and Keri Russell.[12] Timberlake then recruited Chasez to be in an all-male singing group, put together by Chris Kirkpatrick and financed by boy band manager Lou Pearlman, that eventually became NSYNC.

The boy band NSYNC formed in 1995, and began their career in 1996 in Europe; Timberlake and Chasez served as its two lead singers. In 1998, the group rose to prominence in the United States with the release of their self-titled debut studio album, which sold 11 million copies and included the single “Tearin’ Up My Heart”. Their second album No Strings Attached (2000) sold 2.4 million copies in the first week, and included a number one single, “It’s Gonna Be Me”. NSYNC’s third album Celebrity (2001) was also financially successful. The group’s second and third studio albums spawned top-five singles such as “Bye Bye Bye”, “Girlfriend” and “This I Promise You”. Upon the completion of the Celebrity Tour, the group went into hiatus in 2002. NSYNC performed at the Academy Awards in 2000, the 2002 Winter Olympics, and the Super Bowl XXXV halftime show. The band sold more than 70 million records worldwide, becoming the fifth-best selling boy band in history.

In 2000, Timberlake appeared in The Wonderful World of Disney movie Model Behavior. He played Jason Sharpe, a model who falls in love with a waitress after mistaking her for another model.

The rise of his own stardom and the general decline in the popularity of boy bands led to the dissolution of NSYNC. Band member Lance Bass was openly critical of Timberlake’s actions in his memoir Out of Sync. By 2002, when the group went on a hiatus and members were following individual projects, he partnered with Pharrell Williams of the producing team The Neptunes–and Timbaland to start working on new music. The idea of going solo was strengthened a year earlier. Timberlake originally wrote the single “Gone” around 2001 for Michael Jackson, but he turned the song down, and it was instead recorded by NSYNC. Before its release, however, Jackson contacted him. Timberlake declared in a later interview that the first time he felt confident to go solo happened after that conversation. In a retrospective article in 2020, Billboard considered Celebrity “the group’s swan song, setting the stage for Timberlake’s equally massive solo career”