After growing up with The Chronicles of Narnia books in England, actor Ben Barnes got the opportunity of a lifetime when director Andrew Adamson cast him as the title character in the second film in the fantasy epic The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian. Having spent most of his acting life on the stage before landing a role in Neil Gaiman's Stardust, Barnes had the difficult choice having to put his dreams of working with Britain's National Theatre on hold in order to play Prince Caspian. While doing press for The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian, Ben Barnes shared his candid thoughts on being cast as the lead, watching the film for the first time, the messages his character conveys, and his most embarrassing moment on the set.

Ben Barnes on getting the role of Prince Caspian:

"I can’t even describe that evening. I found out, I told them to ring me any time that they made their decision, just ring me either way. I gotta know either way. And it was about 4am London time when they called me and I just ran around the house screaming. I can’t explain to you the thrill of the first lead, Hollywood big film, and in particular when it’s something that you’ve grown up reading. You don’t get many moments like that.

Barnes on when the weight and scope of the project hit him:

"I don’t know. I rented the first movie when I was auditioning and I thought, ‘These are big, aren’t they?’ I remember watching the BBC series and finding it just charming and lovely and I was eight and it’s magic and it’s real. Then you watch it back and it’s just a dwarf in a mouse suit. That’s not an effect, that’s not a mouse, that’s a dude. I brought that up with Warwick [Davis] because it was him in the original series. But I watched a few minutes of it when we were shooting this, and you can’t watch too much of it because it’s like all of those things, like when you watch old He-Man episodes and you realize they’re just using the same frame over and over again. So you don’t want it to lose its magic. But kids today don’t know how good they got it. I was completely overwhelmed by the way it looked. I wondered what Andrew [Adamson] has been doing since September, and now I know."

On watching the film as simply a movie and enjoying it:

"I found it hard to form any sort thought about anything as I was watching it. I might as well have been watching it on my own. I was totally engaged with it. I remember watching the first ten minutes and sitting with my feet up on the seat and thinking, as Glozelle moves towards the wardrobe I’ve hidden in with the secret passage, and feeling tense and then realizing that I knew I’m not in there so there’s no reason for me to be. I kind of felt like that all the way through. I felt like I wasn’t quite sure what was going to happen next even though I’ve obviously shot it, because a lot of the lines, even the dialogue had changed for the animated characters. They changed a lot of the dialogue from the original script. Eddie Izzard, one of my comic heroes, I’ve seen him so many times on stage, and he’s obviously gone in there and thought, ‘Well, it would be fun if I did this. How about this way?’ I can just imagine him doing it and it was great to sit down and see what is, essentially, a year of your life condensed into two and a half hours of relentless action and emotion."

On getting used to acting for film as compared to acting for the stage:

"It’s a different skill entirely. On stage you have two and a half hours to go through a two and a half hour journey and this is seven months to go through a two and a half hour journey. So you have to kind of psych yourself up for each individual moment. Actually the main enemy there is that you can psych yourself up too much for one particular moment because it’s the only moment you have to make sure of that day, and so it’s the most important thing in the world to you at that moment and it might not be that important a moment. I think that you have to remember that it’s a part of this whole through-line and there are moments where it has to ease off. You can’t be too intense and earnest about it all of the time. But I think it's probably something that takes years to get used to the difference and to be able to flip between the two. Obviously most of my experience is on stage, but I’m really looking forward to doing more in the film world and seeing how I get on."

Stepping into the Shoes of Prince Caspian with Actor Ben Barnes Page 2