Justin Timberlake is getting Oscar buzz for his portrayal of Sean Parker in The Social Network.
What does the real-life Parker — founder of Napster and founding president of Facebook — think of the performance?
"It's a great performance of a character that isn't me," Parker, 30, told UsMagazine.com at Thursday's Angel Ball 2010 held at Cipriani Wall Street in NYC.
As portrayed by Timberlake in the flick, Parker comes off as a smooth, hard-partying mentor to Mark Zuckerberg; he was pushed out of Facebook after a 2005 cocaine possession arrest.
Should Timberlake, 29, be nominated for an Academy Award? "That's a good question," Parker said, laughing. "It's not my industry."
Back in September, Timberlake admitted to Us that he was "scared" to take on the role of Parker. "The movie's dense. There's a lot there," he said.
"It would take me all night to sort of go through what we talked about, about what this character is."
The singer-turned actor said Parker's character has "a lot of layers" and that director David Fincher helped him in "diagramming the arc and peeling back the layers."
Although Parker left the company before it became a global phenomenon, he still has ownership stakes in the social networking site. Now nearly a billionaire and an active philanthropist, he has been working on his latest online venture, a music startup called Spotify.