Timberlake was scared to play Mark Zuckerberg

Los Angeles: Pop star Justin Timberlake was scared to take on the role based on Facebook co-founder Mark Zuckerberg in David Fincher's new film The Social Network.

The Sexy Back hitmaker was nervous about working with the Fincher who is known for such intense films as Fight Club, Seven and The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, reported Us magazine.

"That scared me. This movie's dense. There's a lot there.It would take me all night to sort of go through what we talked about, about what this character is," Timberlake, 29, said at the film's NYC premiere on Friday.

Timberlake said his character has "a lot of layers" and that Fincher helped him in "diagramming the arc and peeling back the layers."

"He's an actor's director, and he pulls performances out of people," he added.

In the film, which Fincher has yet to say is based on fact, Zuckerberg is portrayed as a back-stabbing, arrogant, socially awkward Harvard student who invents the popular social networking site that accidentally makes him and his pals billionaires.

Zuckerberg has said the film is nothing but fiction.

"I do think everyone will take something different away from this movie. I think it really touches on the younger generations and that 'We-want-what-we-want-and-we-want-it-really-fast' [mentality]. We have the Internet now where we can do that: We talk fast, we walk fast, we think fast," Timberlake said.