For one thing, the Dorchester has baked special biscuits in the shape of the letters "F", "W" and "B" to stand for Friends With Benefits, Timberlake's new romcom. OK, so the icing is a bright swimming-pool blue, which is a little off-putting (later, as I am leaving, Justin himself will pick up a wobbly "W" and, in a slightly incredulous voice, ask: "Is this actually edible?")
But, still: free biscuits. For another, it is only fair I admit that the Dorchester's luxuriant pale carpets and mushroom-cloud plumped cushions are, in this instance, a great leveller. They make him seem less young, and me less uncool. It would, of course, be exceedingly thrilling, not to mention mightily amusing, if he were to start singing Rock Your Body in his excellent falsetto, while leap-frogging the sofa.
His assistant brings him down from a suite upstairs. He is, at least to begin with, plainly guarded, and his face is as grey and as pale as old grouting, but he is also polite to a fault, his old-fashioned Southern manners apparently having remained intact in the face of both his multi-million pound fortune and his immense fame (a few girls are patiently standing outside the hotel even as we speak).
Later on, when I ask him about money, and how it might be possible to appreciate life's smaller pleasures when you can have anything you want, he says: "I grew up in Tennessee. My mum told me it's uncouth to talk about money. I feel weird talking about it."
If this is a swerve, then his much-lauded performance in the Oscar-winning The Social Network by David Fincher was not a one-off: his face is a more-or-less convincing knot of embarrassment.
Unmemorable
Is it impossible for him to be anonymous? It strikes me, looking at him now, that he has the kind of looks weirdly unmemorable. "I don't know," he says, uncertainly. "I've never analysed my face. I think I know what you mean. I guess it's easier to go places when there's no event, when you're not working. Right now, the word has gone out that I'm here, so everyone knows I'm in town." He shrugs.
"I think I struggled with it more in my early 20s, trying to make sense of it. But then you realise that you can't make sense of it, and you just have to let it all go."
So if it — the fame, the recognition — stopped tomorrow, would that be a relief, or would it, in fact, be awful: a painful loss, a kind of living death? "Sure, I'd be OK with it. I don't wake up and feel famous. I just love what I do."
Miraculously, though, he has managed to put some distance between himself and his astonishingly successful pop career. It's almost impossible to win credibility in one world when you are known in another — particularly if that other is the land of pop. So he has plainly been exceedingly clever — or at least, that's how it looks from the outside.
He laughs. "I wish I could take the credit for it. But it wasn't like that, though I agree that The Social Network was a breakthrough. I have a running joke with friends that I should have a business card that says: ‘David Fincher put me in a movie.' It was thrilling being nominated for awards, because I felt the sense of doubt in people when I was cast. And it's true that I auditioned numerous times. But I felt I could do something with it, something subtle. The thing is that my idols have always been the types of guys who could do anything: Gene Kelly, Fred Astaire, Sinatra, Dean Martin; and when you look up to people like that, you don't accept that you need to be compartmentalised."
So is acting to be his only career now? "I wasn't trying to make a point. They [the films] came at an opportune time, and they all seemed different characters, and I wouldn't have passed them up. Friends With Benefits: it feels like a two-hander to me, but it is a big movie, and this is the first straightforward male I've been able to play."
But I fear he was fighting a losing battle in the case of Friends With Benefits, in which he plays a designer at GQ in New York who enjoys a lot of violently athletic, no-strings, "no emotions" sex with his headhunter friend, Jamie (played by Mila Kunis) until, inevitably, they fall in love.
"I keep getting the comment that Mila and I had a lot of chemistry, and we do, but I think you also have to get the rhythm right. They have to be an even match. There's a way to do naughty. You can do crass if you're witty at the same time."
Is he and Kunis — this is the rumour — dating? He says not.
Unlike most boy-band types, Timberlake, though, seems to be in possession of an almost super-human work ethic; his business interests alone — there are restaurants, a clothing line, a golf course — would happily adorn the portfolio of a fat plutocrat three times his age.
Was he always like this? Yes.
Right from the start, it seems, he knew what he wanted to do; it was he who pushed to enter TV's Star Search (he sang country music songs) and he who pushed to become a "mouseketeer" — and he isn't remotely embarrassed to say so.
When he joined 'N Sync, he worked even harder. "I was the youngest in the group, but I also grew up being an athlete, and so you have this thing in the back of your mind that practice is important, that preparation is as important as performance. I was very serious. I was too serious, probably. It's very type-A behaviour, don't you think?"
‘Never satisfied'
And was this process helpful? "Well, I was never satisfied. I always had to be better."
Didn't adoration go to his head? "No, no. There's a level of performance that takes a lot of confidence, and sometimes that can be misinterpreted, that's all."
How easy is it, though, to find people he can trust? "Yeah, well, I've been doing it long enough, haven't I? Your bulls*** meter is tuned in. You become adept at knowing what someone's intentions are." Casual encounters must inevitably be viewed through the filter of his public image. "It's always going to be a misunderstanding at first, good or bad. I can't control what impression people have of me.
"Sometimes I used to break my neck to try and make people feel disarmed because I didn't like it that they were so nervous or excited around me. Other times, I would misinterpret that [behaviour], especially if there were cameras around. I'd think: this isn't real, and I would act up. Once you separate that out for yourself, you're more comfortable. What I do is a piece of who I am, but it's not all. I'm a son, at some point maybe I'll be a boyfriend again, I'm a friend, I'm a nephew, I'm a grandson. I'm all those things."
He has also been careful to stay in close touch with his school friends. "Actually, I was just texting my best friend. He's in Montana. What makes most people comfortable is some sort of sense of nostalgia. I grew up in a small town and I could count my friends on one hand, and I still live that way. I think I'll die in a small town. "
But what about the fortune he is so anxious to avoid discussing. Doesn't it distort everything?
"I will just say that I am pretty frugal. I'll probably shop [for clothes] for myself once a year, and that will last me for the rest of the year. It's nice to have places in LA and New York. I spend enough time in both that it's nice to have a home. But I don't need them. I always thought I'd fly on Southwest airlines, so this sounds crazy, but if I'm able to charter a jet, my friends are so grateful and so excited. None of them takes anything for granted, and I don't think they'd let me act that way, either."
I wonder if he is happy.
"What, you mean, like, right now?" No, I mean in general. "Well, I don't feel discontented any more, and I think I did before." He sort of cranks the words out. "I do feel happy. If I'm being honest about my cognitive nature, then I've had a lot of people tell me I was going to fail; a lot of people doubted me, and I still have a sense of that, only now I feel differently about it. I no longer need to prove them wrong."
Are the next few movies stacked up, like planes coming in to land? "No. I don't have anything on my plate at all." So what? He's off to the beach? He laughs. "That is a little bit what I'm saying to myself. Go to the beach. One thing I've learned is, you do need to take time out here and there to enjoy life.
"In my 20s, what I did was who I was. I don't feel that way any more. It's not about what you can put out in the world. I feel validated by things that aren't about expectation, either other people's or my own. True success is... the process."
Review: Lust in translation
The idea of friends enjoying "no strings attached" sex has become a fertile hunting ground for Hollywood, and you can see why. When the always good-looking friends convince themselves such a relationship will work, it's the excuse for lots of tastefully choreographed sexual shenanigans and fashionably rude banter.
And then the friends inevitable discovery that it won't work takes us straight into the good, old-fashioned Hollywood ending. It's a near-perfect blend of contemporary sex and traditional romance: what's not to like?
Well, so far, very little. This time last year it was Drew Barrymore and Justin Long being very funny as they discovered they couldn't walk away from a summer fling in Going The Distance.
And now Mila Kunis and Justin Timberlake get more than their sheets entangled in Friends With Benefits. Why has it always got to come with complications and guilt? They moan as they try to convince each other that sex between friends should be like any other leisure pursuit. Why can't it be more like tennis?
And so it begins: the clothes come off, the bed-linen is artfully draped and the repartee becomes too rude to repeat in a family newspaper.
But while the story is familiar, the delivery here is of a pretty good standard. Kunis is spot-on as Jamie, the feisty New York headhunter, who professionally always gets her man but is less fortunate in matters of the heart.
Timberlake, so good in The Social Network, so wasted in Bad Teacher, grabs his first genuinely leading role with an endearing, puppy dog enthusiasm. He plays Dylan, whom Jamie lures to Manhattan with the promise of an interview for a top job on a glossy men's magazine. He gets the job and pretty soon he's got Jamie too.
But it's just sex. No relationships, no emotion, whatever happens, they agree. Yeah, right.
Director Will Gluck, who caught the eye with Easy A last year, impresses again with this. The pace is swift and some of the banter so quickfire that it is in danger of getting lost, at least in the first half.
But then the pace eases, perhaps too much, when Jamie and Dylan decide their sexual relationship has run its course and they will be just good friends. Hands up who thinks that's going to work.
The film is a good 10 minutes too long but a cracking finale almost makes up for the wait. Patricia Clarkson, playing Jamie's hippy-chick mother, is good fun, as is Woody Harrelson as sports editor.
But it won't be for everybody: this is a rom-com aimed at a younger crowd. If you don't know who Shaun White is (the Olympic-medal-winning snowboarder and skateboarder contributes a surprisingly funny cameo) it probably isn't for you.
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