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"Bastards," says Ben Barnes. He's talking about his fellow actors from Prince Caspian, the new Chronicles of Narnia film in which he plays the title role. He's joking. Sort of. "I'm eternally jealous of all of them," says Barnes.
The problem is the constant, tedious raving of
castmates, as well as director Andrew Adamson, about a magical day they shared shooting a scene in a remote corner of New Zealand's beautiful South Island.
On a gloriously crystalline, isolated river near Haast, all the stars except Barnes spent a day in rowboats, with Adamson working an outboard motor and wielding the radio controls for the actors' dinghy. "It was like student film-making, completely idyllic and intimate," says Adamson.
Actor William Moseley, who plays Peter Pevensie, says it was "mindblowingly beautiful, one of the best days ever". Barnes wasn't invited along his character, the naive prince on the run from his evil uncle, wasn't in the scene. "I didn't get to go. Everyone's favourite day on Prince Caspian didn't include Prince Caspian," Barnes says, rolling his eyes.
Sitting in a Sydney hotel room, the 26-year-old Englishman is experiencing the churn of blockbuster publicity for the first time. Already, Barnes seems a little jaded by the slicing of his life into 20-minute interview slots, policed by PR people with stopwatches and clipboards. He sighs frequently and runs his fingers through his brown hair. It's his own hair now.
For the movie, Barnes needed hair extensions and a great deal of fake tan to become sufficiently swarthy as Caspian, the thwarted heir to the throne of the Telmarines, a race of humans who have invaded the magical kingdom of Narnia. Barnes had come straight from a role as a pale-skinned, short-haired schoolboy on the London stage in a National Theatre production of Alan Bennett's play The History Boys.
A casting agent for Narnia slipped into the stalls one night to see if Barnes' stage presence lived up to the critics' positive reviews. Next thing, Barnes got a 3am phone call offering him the Narnia role, and had to decide whether to break his contract with the venerable theatre company. Barnes flew to New Zealand to begin rehearsals, prompting a sobering and unfulfilled threat by the National Theatre to sue him for breach of contract.
After two months' training, he was confident enough on horseback to ride alone through a swollen river. "It was a magic moment. The water was so deep the horse was actually swimming, the cameras were all on the shore and everything was quiet. It was really special. Moments like that bring home the perspective of what you're doing and how lucky you are." In headlines, captions and on tweeny fan websites, Barnes is now referred to as "the new Orlando Bloom". A few years ago it would have been a big compliment; Bloom was a similarly toffy, spunky Englishman with a knack for swordy epics.
Now, however, Bloom's career has got stuck on silly romantic comedies and squiring models through the pages of New Idea. "Oh well," scoffed another writer at the Caspian media preview, "at least they're not calling him the new River Phoenix." So how exactly does a young, handsome actor transcend his own square jaw to shape a decent, diverse career? By choosing wisely, and avoiding the rom-com dross.
Barnes is off to a good start, starring in a film adaptation of Noel Coward's play Easy Virtue, co-starring Jessica Biel, Kristin Scott Thomas and Colin Firth and due for release next year, plus word is he's to play Dorian Gray in an adaptation of Oscar Wilde's allegorical novel. "I've been so lucky in the stories I've been included in and the varieties of characters I've been asked to play," Barnes says.
"I really hope that does continue, being inside a different character's head and learning about the human condition by exploring different characters. I don't think I'm particularly in it to get involved with making kind of fluffy films, I can't really see the point of making them." Barnes takes a breath, clearly realising how that sentence would sound to a casting director. He smiles.
"I don't want to speak too soon just in case that's what I end up doing. You never really know, but you have to choose your own path. It's very difficult shaping a career in this business, you never really know what opportunities are going to come along, or when people are bored of you, you never know. I'm fully aware of how precarious it is; I've had enough months out of work to know."
As a London public-schoolboy, Barnes played in shows such as Bugsy Malone with the National Youth Music Theatre from the age of 15, then studied English (including children's literature classics such as the Narnia series) and drama at university, doing endless auditions and picking up work in indie productions such as the yet-to-be-released film Bigga than Ben, the tale of a pair of young Russian crims on the lam through London.
In the dry patches, Barnes worked in restaurants, bars and nightclubs. Is he confident those days of intermittent employment are over? Barnes looks slightly affronted. "I hope so. I think it would be difficult now to go and work in a bar and millions of people around the world would know that you're Prince Caspian, so what are you doing working in a bar? Well, you've failed."
So is this what actors mean when they talk about the pressure of fame? "I think that's why people who get success and need to continue working end up doing these really cheesy awful things and hosting the most bizarre programmes. I honestly don't know what I would do if [acting work] dried up, because you certainly can't go and work in a call-centre or a bar. Life would be impossible." Barnes gives a distinctly unamused laugh. "Thanks for bringing it up.
Now I'm really concerned about what I would do. I'd have to go behind the scenes. I'd beg to be Andrew [Adamson]'s assistant." With its computer-generated brilliance and stirring battles, Caspian will be as successful with pre-teens as the first Narnia movie, The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe but adult audiences will struggle to avoid being distracted by devices that have become a little tired in the past few fantasy-saturated years magical trees and bands of hooded horsemen seem to pop up in every second film these days.
Adamson has valiantly found all the bits of New Zealand scenery that haven't been worked over by Peter Jackson, but there's a certain unshakeable golly-goshness about his posh young protagonists, four fresh-faced children transported from wartime London to help Caspian save Narnia. As the younger actors stand around clutching flaming torches and earnestly discussing battle strategies, it's as though the Famous Five have stumbled on to the set of Survivor: Honolulu.
Barnes' involvement in the film brought a welcome new element of darkness to the film, says Moseley, whose character Peter engages Caspian in a struggle for supremacy as they squabble over military tactics. "Having Ben there added an interesting element, and something I think the audience won't be ready for," says Moseley, 21.
"Instead of a story of four children, as in the last film, it's now two alpha males competing with each other." He credits Barnes, who has become a friend, with bringing a more adult sensibility. "I really liked the change of atmosphere," says Moseley. "I'm all about change. Change is what drama is all about, and with Ben there the film became a much darker Narnia.
It's still got all the elements of spirituality of the first film, but it's a much more physically and emotionally intense film." Adamson hadn't intended to cast a British actor for Caspian who, along with his fellow Telmarines speaks with an indeterminate Mediterranean accent, but says he was impressed throughout the production with Barnes' presence and adaptability.
Barnes says he'll be fascinated to see how Caspian is changed by the passage of time in the sequel Voyage of the Dawn Treader, which begins shooting in New Zealand and Mexico later this year with a new director, Michael Apted. "Caspian has been king for several years by the time Dawn Treader starts, so it'll be good for me to reprise the role and take that on. He'll be a different man." The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian is in cinemas from this Thursday.
