Interviews / Artikel

[Nina B.]

http://www.examiner.com/examiner/x-3767-Celebrity-QA-Examiner~y2009m5d20-Ben-Barnes-uncensored-and-telling-the-naked-truth

http://www.examiner.com/examiner/x-3767-Celebrity-QA-Examiner~y2009m5d20-Ben-Barnes-rocks-classic-literature-in-the-movies

[Nina B.]

Das erste Interview jetzt auch auf deutsch hier: B-B.de (29.05.)

[Nina B.]

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-1194041/Simon-Russell-Beale-new-twist-Deathtrap.html

Ben's fans will all be carrying this picture

Ben Barnes is likely to find himself under siege from fans when the terrific new gothic chiller Dorian Gray opens here in September.

If it is marketed as well as Twilight, then expect Barnes to be in hiding - much like Twilight star Robert Pattinson.

Pattinson was in New York recently and was unable to leave his hotel room because of the hordes of fans surrounding the building.

Thinking about it, though, Barnes (perhaps because he's older) has a better sense of how to operate below the radar and avoid - if he wants! - those girlie mobs.

Even so, if my sense of Oliver Parker's Ealing Studios production, based on Oscar Wilde's classic novel, is correct, then the shrewdly-shot movie will garner Barnes more fame than The Chronicles Of Narnia picture, in which he played Prince Caspian.

The actor plays the handsome title character who appears charming on the surface, but underneath his life is a monstrous corruption.

He has made a devilish pact to retain his youth and beauty while he locks away a portrait of himself that, over time, reveals his true, rotten-to-the-core character.

Colin Firth superbly underplays the aristocrat who leads Dorian into temptation, and newcomer Rachel Hurd-Wood, a stunning screen beauty, captures the delicacy of the ingenue Dorian destroys.

Rebecca Hall, as always, is sublime as the woman who loves him.

[~Andrea~]

http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-enter ... 09371.html
Ben Barnes: Prince of hearts

Ben Barnes, better known as Caspian, lives in a world of red carpets and hysterical fans. He tells Alice Jones about hero-worship, Narnia, and his new role in Oscar Wilde's famous tale of narcissism

Friday, 19 June 2009

It can be hard work being a Hollywood hero. Just ask Ben Barnes, a.k.a. Prince Caspian, star of the billion-dollar-grossing Chronicles of Narnia franchise.

There's the grinding tour of world premieres ("Travelling for three months, sitting on your own in a hotel room in Taiwan, thinking, 'what am I doing here?' Just weird.") and the red-carpet appearances where your every move is greeted by an electric storm of flashbulbs ("I don't think there's any way of ever being comfortable with it. You put on a perma-grin, which is so unnatural, and the lights make you squint. I get very anxious."). There's the frankly disconcerting experience of seeing your very own toy action figurine for the first time. "My own was absolutely awful, shamefully bad. I was a bit upset by that. How many times do you get an action figure made of you? Mine looked like a cross between Adrien Brody and Javier Bardem – but ill." There's the tireless and tiresome conveyor belt of press junkets and interviews.

"They take as much out of you as filming does", sniffs Barnes. "I thought, 'it's only chatting, how hard can it be?'" As it turned out, the New York round of Prince Caspian promotion very nearly wiped this swashbuckling regent out: he did 90 interviews in one day, woke up the next with no voice and found he had to do 70 more, dosed up on a cocktail of vitamin C, honey and lemon, and Chinese potions. "I didn't really have a choice. The film was called Prince Caspian, there was no hiding." Appearing on Jay Leno's sofa was a rare highlight. "Have you seen it? It's definitely the best interview I've done..."

And then there are the fans, the prolifically letter-writing, largely female fans. Barnes spends "thousands of pounds" replying to the sacks of mail he receives each month. When he casually thanked a fan in an interview for throwing a pair of "Hello Kitty" boxer shorts at him as he arrived at Tokyo airport ("It was a bit creepy, but they were clean and I'd been travelling for three months..."), his mailbox was swiftly inundated with cutesy cartoon-cat underwear. "What part of a 27-year-old English man wants that?" he asks, incredulous. "I don't know what to do with them, they just sit there in a pile."

Not that Barnes is complaining, of course. It's just that all this fanfare and adulation has happened rather suddenly and the slight actor from Wimbledon hasn't quite caught up. "Somebody needs to give me an alternative to the word 'overwhelming'. People don't want to hear that. They want to hear that you enjoy it." Who wouldn't be overwhelmed, though, at the sight of themselves brandishing a sword on a 10-storey billboard on Sunset Boulevard? Or at being the centre of attention at the UK's largest ever film premiere, which drew 10,000 Narnia fans to the 02? Or at a head-spinning $419m in box-office receipts?

One year ago, few had heard of Barnes. He had a fleeting appearance in the Hollywood fantasy film Stardust and a West End play under his belt. Prince Caspian's casting director was in the audience for The History Boys one night and saw something in Barnes's swagger as the peacock of the class, Dakin. They called him in for an audition and a week later he had the part. He was immediately dispatched to "Narnia boot camp", where he learned to gallop, sword-fight and bellow war-cries, before a seven-month shoot in New Zealand and Prague.

Since then he has snapped up two more leading roles. First as the foppish foil to Colin Firth in Easy Virtue, Stephan Elliott's brash reworking of Noël Coward's play, and, secondly, he has just finished filming the lead role in Oliver Parker's upcoming version of The Picture of Dorian Gray with Firth (now a "close friend") and Rebecca Hall.

As if further proof that Barnes has "arrived" were needed, in March he took part in one of Vanity Fair's coveted photo-shoots, recreating West Side Story with Jennifer Lopez and a cast of hot young actors including Twilight's Robert Pattinson and High School Musical's Ashley Tisdale. It was just as fun as it looked, he says, proudly showing me a dancing scene, now the screensaver on his iPhone. "I didn't really know what was going on", he admits. "I felt like the odd one out. I think I always will a bit."

Today, arriving at his agent's office and blaming his late arrival on the Piccadilly line, Barnes doesn't really look like a star. Tall and slim and dressed in a white T-shirt, leather jacket, jeans and biker boots, he's sporting some patchy stubble and "ridiculous" long hair in preparation for the Prince Caspian: Voyage of the Dawn Treader shoot in July ("I do not want extensions again."). The only sign that Hollywood has got to him is a set of dazzlingly white, perfectly straight teeth which he flashes frequently in a smile that has charmed even the bitchy gossip-hound Perez Hilton, who frequently posts red carpet pictures of the "dreamy" actor on his showbiz blog. Not that Hilton has many occasions to do so: though a frequent flier to LA, Barnes still lives in London with his brother and prefers a night at the cinema or a gig over what he calls the "gossip-mag lifestyle". He is, though, finally coming round to the idea that he might have made it. "I've always felt there's an excuse for me getting the job, that it can't actually be my acting. With Narnia, they were running out of time and needed someone who was good with accents: I can do accents. It's happenstance: I haven't got this of my own right", he shrugs. "And then I got Easy Virtue and The Picture of Dorian Gray and couldn't come up with an excuse for them."

Barnes was born in leafy south-west London to a psychotherapist mother and a professor of psychiatry father. At King's College School, his precocious classmates included the actor Khalid Abdalla (star of The Kite Runner) and if.comedy Best Newcomer, Tom Basden. Barnes played drums in the school jazz orchestra and put on Motown nights with Lizzie (sister of Rob) Pattinson from Wimbledon High, a girls' school down the road. His first taste of performing came when he joined the National Youth Music Theatre (NYMT) and appeared, aged 16, in the West End in Bugsy Malone alongside other rising stars Jamie Bell (Billy Elliot) and Sheridan Smith (Gavin and Stacey).

"When I finished school, everyone wanted to go to a good university and become a lawyer or a doctor. My A-levels were sort of chosen for me. The only thing I'd ever chosen for myself was the NYMT. I needed some time to think." Though his parents wanted him to go to university, Barnes took two years out, trying out singing and television presenting, and cooking up a project with the entertainment svengali Simon Fuller to open a jazz club and launch an album.

When that came to nothing, he enrolled at Kingston University to read English literature and drama – "but the only thing I wanted to do was direct plays, be in plays and take them up to Edinburgh". In what one imagines was a moment of student inebriation, he briefly joined the boyband Hyrise, who were longlisted as the UK's Eurovision entry in 2004. "We had one song and we sang it once. It was a stupid side-project for, like, a week", he sighs. "It's the worst thing I've ever done but I didn't expect anyone to ever see it." Their one performance is immortalised on YouTube.

Stardust was his break into the major league and led to Bigga Than Ben, a low-budget independent British film about two "pieces of Russian scum" trying to make a living in London, milking the system with illegal jobs, drug dealing and rent dodging. "It was shot for £200,000 over four weeks. We got the bus everywhere and got changed in phone boxes", says Barnes proudly. "The director saw Stardust on my CV and said: 'So you've just worked with De Niro?' I said yes. Didn't meet him once of course..."

It has not always been an easy ride; Barnes already has one dispute under his belt, when he left The History Boys six months into its West End run to play Caspian, annoying the National Theatre. "I'm still hugely regretful about it and I still haven't heard a peep out of them. I didn't feel like I was leaving anyone in the lurch but I did feel like I was letting people down. And I felt like I was going to vomit for three and a half weeks between getting Prince Caspian and leaving. It was always my dream to work at the National: I'd been going there with my Dad since I was 10. I'd love to round it off one day by going back. It's still the most gratifying job I've ever done."

Prince Caspian, he implies, was not quite so gratifying. "It's more to do with the contrast between the marketing and what I was asked to do. I was trying to do this awkward character who wasn't sure he wanted the responsibility of being a leader. I don't think that tested so well, so they tried to tweak him into a hero." Did they Hollywood-ise him? "Just a little. Yeah. Which is completely fair and it made a lot of money so they know what they're doing. But at the same time, as you can see by all my other choices, it's not particularly what I'm going for. I want to play characters that are interesting to watch."

Still, the blockbuster has opened doors. "People want to meet me more. It's something in people's eyes when you go into a meeting" – and Barnes is now firmly part of a powerful Brit pack of young actors cutting a dash through Hollywood, alongside Pattinson, Rupert Friend, Jim Sturgess, Dominic Cooper (who also made his name playing Dakin) and Andrew Garfield. He was recently rumoured to be lobbying hard for a lead in the massive Twilight movies. "I've never been precious about stuff. I'll ring up directors and ask them very forward questions. I don't really like the politics of it, I'd rather get involved." Next up, he's filming the Narnia sequel, and a Memento-style thriller in Boston and a British film are in the pipeline. Meanwhile, he dreams of making a film of Jesus Christ Superstar with the theatrical American Idol runner-up Adam Lambert. Is he ambitious? "I don't feel like I've got on the second rung yet, that I've got going. I don't really know who I am as an actor: the best thing would be to experiment with it for the next 30 years and never really find out."

'Bigga Than Ben' is released on DVD on 22 June

[~Andrea~]

Ein etwas älteres Interview:

http://www.narniafans.com/archives/1641

NarniaFans.com Ben Barnes Interview Exclusive
November 21st, 2008 by Paul Martin

Last week, I got an e-mail offering the opportunity to interview Ben Barnes. He had played Prince Caspian in the latest Narnia film and will be reprising that role when they film Voyage of the Dawn Treader. He is looking forward to that film, greatly, as we all are.

I jumped at the chance to interview him again. Hanging out with him in New York for the Prince Caspian junkets and the premiere was a lot of fun and he was a really cool person, so how could I not?

What follows is most of the interview, but not all of it. We went off into so many tangents that it might even be a bit hard to follow. It was a fun conversation, but not all of it is required, nor would it make much sense.

The interview was set up because of the Narnia Exhibition that is opening at The Franklin in Pennsylvania next week. Tickets are available now. It’s a fantastic exhibition and you can see authentic props and things from the movie, and learn a little bit while you’re at it! Read the full press release following this interview.

Ben Barnes: Hi Paul!

NarniaFans.com: Hey Ben, how’s it going?

Ben Barnes: Excellent, how are you?

NarniaFans.com: Very Good, very good. It’s been a little while since New York, and everything, that was fun.

Ben Barnes: Yeah, I remember, yeah, it’s been a while.

NarniaFans.com: Yeah, so how’s it been, since then?

Ben Barnes: Yeah, it’s been great. I managed to squeeze in another film and listening to all the gossip about moving on with these [Narnia films] and just waiting for that to happen, really.

NarniaFans.com: Right, and I trust you’ve been learning how to sail a ship in the meantime as well?

Ben Barnes: I wish I had been, yeah, I wish I had been. You know, we’re so unsure as to the scheduling that if I started training now, I might be training for years before we actually film it. But most recently I’ve been assured that hopefully we’re going to get going with it in early summer, which would be good.

NarniaFans.com: Excellent.

Ben Barnes: I’ve been looking forward to it since the end of the last one. This is the story I was really excited about when I got the part in the first place.

NarniaFans.com: Oh, of course! So, tell me, how did it feel going through the exhibition, like have you gone through it yet?

Ben Barnes: I’m going through it this afternoon, actually. Have you been through it already?

NarniaFans.com: I went through in Arizona.

Ben Barnes: Oh, okay, how was it?

NarniaFans.com: Oh, fantastic.

Ben Barnes: Great!

NarniaFans.com: People, because it’s Arizona and the desert, people would start to tear up as the snow starts to fall on them and they remember their childhood.

Ben Barnes: Oh, that’s fantastic. I mean, apparently you’ve got the wardrobe and then the snow and you can sit on the icy Witch’s throne and the Telmarine war machines and everything. Sounds great.

NarniaFans.com: So, did you bring any family with you to the exhibition?

Ben Barnes: No, they’re home in London. They’ve got their own very busy lives.. I’m looking forward to it!

NarniaFans.com: What are you looking forward to most? Because you’re seeing all of your stuff in a museum… and you know, it’s all of your old Prince Caspian stuff!

Ben Barnes: I think, obviously, from a very selfish point of view I think it will be kind of cool to see the costumes that I was wearing day in, day out, in a glass case. I think that’s kind of cool and interesting.

NarniaFans.com: You’d probably feel the urge to pick it up and put it on right away!

Ben Barnes: Right, exactly, I’m just imagining walking up to it and having a museum guard say “please don’t touch that, sir!” and I’ll be like “But it’s mine!”

NarniaFans.com: Like your old sword and everything.

Ben Barnes: Exactly, and I just finished shooting Dorian Gray, based on Oscar Wilde, and they got this fantastic portrait painted. This very expensive portrait painted. And I was like “can I have that, afterwards for my mom?” and they were like “absolutely not, do you know what this is worth? We’re giving this to a museum.” And I was like “but it’s a picture of me, what do you mean you’re giving it to a museum, it makes no sense!”

NarniaFans.com: Right, and that’s a huge movie for you as well.

Ben Barnes: I’m 27 and my world is already in museums around the world, it doesn’t seem to make any sense. It should be at least 50 years after you’re dead that things from your career end up in museums.

NarniaFans.com: Right, it’s like, you’ve done two big films and a couple of independents and you’re already in museums. Have you been able to stay grounded in all of this? Is Dorian Gray going to skyrocket you?

Ben Barnes: I don’t know, I don’t think so… I’m very lucky, I’m a quite private person, it’s actually quite good for me, I would much rather have it this way round. I find it very uncomfortable, really, reading about myself or watching myself on things, so I would rather have it this way round. And I’ve been very fortunate, the kind of attention I’ve been receiving has been mostly very positive and I get thousands of lovely letters from literally every country in the world about how much they’ve enjoyed the movies and things. And that part of it is wonderful, because that’s why you do it, you know, you do it so that there are people around the world who watch it and get something out of it and enjoy them and take something away from it and that is what, on the whole that they achieve. In the same way that that’s why C.S. Lewis wrote the books in the first place: to allow kids’ imaginations to run away with them and to deliver decent moral and ethical messages and I think that that’s an important thing, escapism.

NarniaFans.com: I’ve got a friend who babysits a little girl that has a pillow with your face on it, she’s like four years old.

Ben Barnes: So she’s the other one, because my mom has one and I know that they sold two.

NarniaFans.com: (laughter) Yeah, and she kisses it before she goes to bed every night.

Ben Barnes: Oh, that’s so sweet. A little scary, but very sweet. Oh, and she’s four, that’s absolutely adorable.

NarniaFans.com: What are you looking forward to the most out of this whole exhibition?

Ben Barnes: You probably know better than I do, what was the highlight for you?

NarniaFans.com: I don’t know, there was a lot of great stuff. The ice wall, going into Narnia…

Ben Barnes: Let me ask you a question: have you played the Caspian video game?

NarniaFans.com: Oh yeah.

Ben Barnes: Have you finished it?

NarniaFans.com: I have.

Ben Barnes: Okay, cause I need help. I’m at the part with the White Witch and Nikabrik and the Werewolf are coming at me from either side and they keep running away and I can’t get past them. How do I kill them?

NarniaFans.com: I can’t even remember how that part played out, that was a long time ago.

Ben Barnes: I have it on the Wii and I am so stuck.

NarniaFans.com: Right, I do too.

Ben Barnes: I figure there must be six year olds who can do this, and I can’t do it. But you’ve been completely unhelpful and I’m gonna have to ask someone else.

(laughter)

NarniaFans.com: I’m sorry man.

Ben Barnes: That’s alright.

NarniaFans.com: Let me look it up and I’ll e-mail you or something.

Ben Barnes: Yeah… I’ll work it out eventually, I have to do it on my own, I have to learn to do it on my own.

NarniaFans.com: I mean, we’re both the same age, and I have problems with it too, you know.

Ben Barnes: Yeah, yeah, see, me and my brother sit there in my apartment and go “Come on, Nikabrik, die!” I mean, I’m literally calling up Warwick Davis going “how do I kill you?”

NarniaFans.com: Nice, I don’t know… the internet has a lot of good tips for it.

Ben Barnes: Yeah, I’ll have to go look it up there.

NarniaFans.com: So, what’s next then, for you?

Ben Barnes: Well, I don’t know, I’m hopefully going to try and fit in a movie or two before Dawn Treader if it’s going to be summer time. It could be a little earlier than that, in which case I might only do one. But I’d like to do something a bit more contemporary. And I’d like to do something American, too, so I’d like to do something like some kind of supernatural thing or a spy thing or something along those lines, but we’ll see.

NarniaFans.com: That’d be kinda cool.

Ben Barnes: I need to do a movie so I can tell my mates in London that I’m doing this, and they go “oh cool.” Yeah, so obviously you can say you’re acting opposite Jessica Biel and they get excited, and then you tell them it’s a Noel Coward adaptation and they lose all interest. So I have to do something where they get excited.

NarniaFans.com: Right. I mean, they’re doing Alice in Wonderland.

Ben Barnes: Yeah, Tim Burton’s doing that with Johnny Depp and Matt Lucas, yeah. That could be cool. I look forward to seeing that. But I’ve gotta stop doing things that are based on like high end British literature, because my last six projects have been Alan Bennett, C.S. Lewis, Noel Coward, Oscar Wilde, and I’ve gotta start being a little less precious about it, I think.

NarniaFans.com: Well, you did do Bigga than Ben.

Ben Barnes: That’s true, that is true. Which I was thrilled that it got actually a cinema release in the UK in five or six more artsy cinemas in London and then it got really fantastic reviews which I was really pleased about.

NarniaFans.com: Excellent. So you’ve got big things ahead.

Ben Barnes: Well, I hope so. Dawn Treader is going to be awesome because it’s my favorite of the books, I think it certainly has the potential to be the best of the movies.

NarniaFans.com: Have you kept in touch with the rest of the cast, since Prince Caspian?

Ben Barnes: Yeah, absolutely, I speak to Anna all the time, I saw William in Los Angeles last week. Less contact with Skandar and Georgie because they’re kinda doing school and everything, but I’m gonna get the whole next movie with them, so.

NarniaFans.com: Excellent, well it’s been great talking to you again.

Ben Barnes: It’s been my pleasure. I’ll talk to you soon!

[Nina B.]

http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/films/features/ben-barnes-prince-of-hearts-1709371.html
Ben Barnes: Prince of hearts

Oh, dieser Artikel hat mir sehr gut gefallen!

[Giulia]

das Interview oben muss ich unbedingt übersetzen *_*

[~Andrea~]

Das drama student magazine interview:


prologue:
It's summer 2009 and the UK is ablaze with fresh young talent. Gone are the days of the customary 'agent-guided actor', as performers across the country are taking their careers in their own hands, writing and producing their own shows and quite literally making things happen!
TDS is proud to be at the forefront of championing these inspirational individuals. Whether it's the Edinburgh Festival, Manchester 24:7, or the Latitude Festival on the south coast, students and graduates alike are becoming the innovators in the worlds of theatre, film, comedy and literature.
Many successful careers are carved on the Edinburgh Fringe, and we've been getting close and personal with the most exciting talent showcasing this year, some for the first time and others who are returning to be part of this international celebration of theatre and the arts.
I spent a lot of time with an aspiring actor there in 2003. I remember his wit, charm and passion, and it was evident that he was tipped for great things. Ben Barnes joins me in an exclusive interview and documents his journey from his days in the NYMT through to his professional career as a renowned Hollywood star.

Interview:
Ben, I'm guessing you must have caught the acting bug at school?
It actually sort of came through music, I was in the choir at school. When I was about 15 the National Youth Music Theatre came to do a workshop and asked if I'd like to come to their annual auditions which I consequently did, and ended up basically working with that company for the next six straight summers doing various productions, particularly in Edinburgh, the Opera House in Covent Garden and Bugsy Malone in the West End - that was my first proper job, I was working in the band.

Yeah you're a talented musician I've heard.
I played drums in the band for that show, but there was such a wide variety of new shows as well, it was creative. You felt like you were part of the creative team and that's what I really enjoyed. And then I sort of carried that on after school, when I went to university. My parents just threatened to disown me, basically, if I didn't go to university. So I obviously decided not to go. I took a couple of years out to do various music projects and TV hosting, which I didn't really enjoy because I didn't think I was very good at it, particularly the TV presenting side of things. What I really wanted to do was acting, but I had no idea how to go about it. I'd been writing off hundreds of letters to agents and getting very curt one line replies. So I applied to university and went to Kingston where I studied Drama with English Literature. There was no theatre company at university. Obviously having had a little bit of experience already, I was part of the team who formed the first drama company there and put on the first productions. So I got into directiong a lot of plays there and then acted in plays obviously, and then took them up to Edinburgh.

What's your memories of doing Edinburgh?
My first ever experience of the Edinburgh Festival was the one summer that I didn't get into the NYMT. That year I went with my school theatre company and I did a play called Inside the Island which actually got five stars in the Scotsman and it was better received than the NYMT show. That was when I was 16, sleeping on floors with 10 other lads and doing that play. Then I went up with the NYMT several times.

I first met you there in 2003 when your were directing your own show.
Yeah absolutely. Well, it was a great learning experience for me having to deal with the people who ran the space that we used, which was the Pleasance venues. I started to get interested in how the box office worked. I remember my worst experience so far was when we had about 15 people in this play that we devised and I directed very badly. I was also in it, even worse in it than I think my directing was! And one afternoon we had two people come to see it, with 15 people in teh company. And the interesting thing is they (theatre staff) came to me and said 'do you still want to do it? Because you've only sold two tickets' and I just looked over to the cast. They were all shaking their heads saying 'No, we want to go to the pub.'

Isn't there a rule that if there's less people in the audience than on stage, you don't actually do it.
Yeah, but I, of course being the sort of dutiful son of the university that I was, said 'No, we are doing it'. But what I was most proud of was avoiding using the prase 'the show must go on', which I didn't use which I was pleased about. But we did do the show and about three more people turned up about 10 minutes in and then left about ten minutes later. So that was probably my worst experience of the Festival.

In hindsight, do you think your English and Drama degree was the right route for you?
I think it was because for the first few years when I was in NYMT, I was quite a small fish in a big pond. The same when I was the youngest in my years at school, so I was always catching up and I think it was nice to go there and be part of initiating something. Helping create this theartre company that still runs there now and just putting on my own two man shows, and that actually is some of the things I'm still most proud of, putting on a couple of plays I've always wanted to put on. And then went out and sold the tickets for it, and it was good for me to be independent and learn. I know a lot of my friends who have been to drama school and the problems that they had with it, was they were being told how, where and why to do everything, which absolutely works for some people, but I think we had some of that expereince in the NYMT already.

And you went for a different approach.
I felt what I needed at aged 21 when I went to university, having always been the youngest, was to take the initiative a little bit and be more proactive. So i think it absolutely was the right decision for me. Plus half of my degree was English Literature and a lot of that is so analytical. Now when I'm getting scripts it helps me be critically analytical and appreciate what is good about the ones that I would choose to pursue.

Drama school graduates often get an agent from their showcase, it must have been quite tough for you to get signed?
Well, the first two times I tried, which was once when I left school when I was 17, and the next just before I went to university when I was about21. I sent off hundreds of letters to agents, out of about 250 letters, probably two people met meThen sent me the same response which everyone else did, which was 'No absolutely not'. So it was very very difficult. Then when I left university, somehow one of my lecturers at university heard of an audition that was going on for directors that were leaving RADA, and they were doing their showcases, and needed actors for them. For some reason, this particular director didn't want anybody from RADA that year. So I went to that and I got a part. It was a very small play which we did at the Pleasance Theatre in Islington. So I wrote off another set of letters and the agents came to see me in that production and signed me from there. That was the first time I really started going off to auditions being represented, about 5 and a half years ago.

How did you find those first castings?
Initially it was all theatre auditions and musicals, and I can't dance, so I found it very disheartening. I'd get through the acting bit and then I have to dance, and then they'd tell me to bugger off. A film audition was never to be heard of and the TV audition was this sort of mystical thing almost attainable. And I went for a couple of those, and it seemed to go okay, and then Doctors, I finally got. It's a rite of passage, you either have to do The Bill or Doctors. If you're going to be a successful British actor, you have to do one of those things.

Or Casualty, like I did.
Or Casualty. Yeah, one of those three things. Doctors was definitely the worst thing I've ever done, on record anyway. But then the jobs started to get a bit better, the Royal Exchange in Manchester, which was my first job that I got that I really thought 'things are moving forward.' It was called Sex, Chips and Rock'n Roll and I loved doing that. Then I did a few other little jobs here and there and basically it started to dry up again, so I just decided to take the initiative myself again, so I went over to LA.

How did that work out?
I'd met somebody who offered to introduce me to some agents when I got there. So I had those meetings and I got an agent. They sent me on this sort of trial period during pilot season and basically the deal was, if I got a job in those two months they would keep me and if I didn't, they wouldn't. Luckily I managed to get a pilot that was shooting up in Canada, so I went and shot that. Obviously people in England sat up and listened again. I got that pilot and then my role in Stardust in the same day. And then it just sort of excalated from there.

At what stage do you think was your turning point, the moment that things started to gather momentum?
You know, everyone always talks about the concept of The Big Break and I'm not sure how much stock I put in that. I think that if you get the 'nearly big breaks' couple of times, eventually it will come. And it could come, or you feel like it is and then a year later there's something else in a similar vein, which feels more solid. Because that day that I got that pilot and Stardust, I thought that was it. Then the day that I got The History Boys at the National, I thought that was it. And then the day I got Narnia... I mean that sort of was it, but having said that, the higlight still of the work that I've done, I think is doing The History Boys. I've been going to the National Theatre since I was very oung with my dad, so it has always been my dream to work there. I still haven't workedactually in the building (Ben was cast later in the transfer to the West End). So I kind of achieved it at 25. To go back and work there again is still my goal.

When you found out they wanted you to play the part of Prince Caspian, did you comprehend the scale of what was to come?
Well I knew the first one had been really big. And I knew I was going to have a tough time living up to those expectations. I don't suppose I really understood how huge a Disney machine was, in terms of publicity particularly, because I spent almost four months doing publicity. So that was the real shocker. And obviously when you get there the majesty and scale of all the sets and the crew and everything. It really overwhelms you. I had no idea.

And did you find the film challenging in terms of horse riding and sword fighting?
Yeah, I mean I hadn't really done any of that stuff before, so the first three weeks we spent sword fighting horse riding, dialect coaching, and that was the sort of training camp, while they were off filming things that I wasn't in it, and then it just started gently chugging into motion for me.

What are you concentrating on at the moment?
Easy Virtue just came out in the States this week. It's doing really well which I'm really pleased about. And then in September I have Dorian Gray coming out, which is the one I've got high hopes for. And then I start shooting the next Narnia film in July, The Voyage Of The Dawn Treader, in Australia. And then this little project I'm starting this week filming in Boston.

Busy boy! So do you reckon you are going to stick with films at the moment?
I think you sort of have to while they're current and in your favor really. As long as people are sending me things with interest I will definitely read them. But having said that, I have taken a few meetings on various stage things and if I'm exited enough by the idea of it, I definitely will do it.

I remember your passion for the stage.
Yeah, I absolutely love it and it's where I started and probably where I feel more comfortable, I would have thought. I get very nervous before starting filming something. And I love the concept of rehearsals. The prospect of doing four weeks of rehearsals for something is just so thrilling to me. Probably because I missed out on all that drama school stuff.

Is it true you knocked yourself out by riding a horse into a tree on Easy Virtue?
No! The director's naughty and he was exaggerating the story. He says that I was begging him to ride the horse, that's absolutely untrue. He was begging me to ride the horse because none of the actors would ride. He was like 'I'm not doing it all in close-ups on CGI' so I did it. And yes, I did fall off the very first take, but that's because the horse ran down and into a dip.

So it was the horse's fault?
Yeah, it was the horse's fault! We were back on that shoot and another take in about 90 seconds. So it really wasn't a big deal.

So you didn't actually pass out?
No.

When you were a TV presenter, did producers really make you ask questions to a tennis ball when someone else went out to do the real interviews?
Yeah! They told me that my job would be flying around the world interviewing musicians, singers and pop stars, and I thought it would be really fun. Then they didn't have enough money to do that, so I sat in this studio and asked questions to tennis balls and then they flew all around the world asking the questions.

Outrageous...
I don't think it was very watchable. I didn't think it was very user friendly.

On the plus side, you worked with Holly Willoughby on that show.
I did, yeah. She was lovely. I haven't seen her in eight years, but she was lovely.

Excellent. Well, listen, thank you very much and I'm not going to ask you about the boy band stuff.
Please don't. I wouldn't tell you anyway! (Laughs)
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Leider funktioniert mein Scanner nicht, deshalb hab ich das Magazin abfotografieren müssen:

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Text neben Caspian Bild: A lot has happened to Ben Barnes since we were on the Edinburgh Fringe together; The History Boys, The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian and the soon to be released Dorian Gray, but some things never change; he's still as funny, friendly and charming as he was when he was starting out, writes Phil Matthews.
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[Nina B.]

Andrea du bist ein Schatz!!!

[Nina B.]

Aus irgendeinem Grund hab ich beim Lesen von Bens Antworten Cobakkas Stimme im Kopf