A tale of two Justins

BIEBER.

DON’T look now, but two Justins are sharing top billing in this season’s stellar lineup. Decidedly more positive is the impact being made by the older Justin Timberlake, who continues to impress fans with his versatility and verve.

He started out as a child talent, but became more popular when he went the boy-band route. Sooner than some people expected, however, the daring and ambitious comer decided to risk his early popularity by opting to go solo as a singer—and, more “dangerously,” to launch his career as an actor.

It turned out that Timberlake’s “dangerous” gambit had more method than impudent madness going for it, because he started to click as an actor perhaps even more than he already made it as a singer and hoofer.

In our view, his big winning move was his edgy performance in “The Social Network,” where he was able to combine vulnerability and cynicism in his portrayal of Sean Parker, the whiz kid who popularized the online sharing site, Napster.

After that unexpectedly complex characterization, the sky became the limit for Timberlake’s acting career!

For his part, Justin Bieber has had an even more stratospheric rise in the music biz, in only a few years becoming the teen idol to beat, with hit albums and concert tours making him a teenage millionaire many times over.

Trouble is, Bieber has been having a rough time of it this season, his private escapades threatening to upstage and undermine his precocious success as an entertainer.

He’s been accused of carousing all night, throwing his weight around and generally behaving like he’s the king of the show biz hill.

TIMBERLAKE.

Expectedly, his bashers have accused him of every real or imagined crime in the book, while his defenders steadfastly point out that he’s still just a teenager, for Pete’s sake—so, cut him some slack, why don’t you?

Lost in the current hue and cry is the fact that Bieber has proven that he’s a complete professional when it comes to his performances, despite his being so young and new at the craft and art of entertainment.

Still, it wouldn’t hurt if Bieber and his handlers come to realize that the almost unrelievedly negative publicity he’s currently getting may eventually erode the career he’s worked so hard to build up.

After all, there’s some truth to the notion that show biz sometimes builds up stars in order to eventually cut them down to size when they misbehave or take their hard-earned stardom for granted!

Another input: Timberlake also started his career as a juvenile performer, so he and Justin should be brought together for a no-holds-barred, one-on-one session, for him to show the younger and obviously more confused Bieber how precocious success can be sustained despite the mad importunings of show business.

Timberlake has been there, done that, so from one Justin to another, just in the nick of time, perhaps, some sense can be knocked from one noggin to the next? We hope so because, in our book, Bieber is promising and hardworking enough, despite his occasional screw-ups, to go the distance as far as real stardom is concerned. He may have been more consistently focused in crafting his career, but the senior Justin would agree.