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Daily Mail Interview 7th December 2007

Grabbing the reins of my dream role

Ben Barnes had to learn horse sense - fast.

Ben, 26, had no equestrian skills when he won the role of dashing Prince Caspian in the rollicking follow-up to The Lion, The Witch And The Wardrobe.

'They said: "How's your horse-riding?"' the actor, who was chosen to play Caspian after a year-long search, told me. 'I may have said something like "average". I wasn't going to lose this job! I mean, I knew what a horse looked like.

My mum showed me a photograph of me, aged eight, on a horse, which proved I had been on a horse before.' First stop, once Ben reached New Zealand, where much of the film was shot, was Auckland's Riding School For The Disabled. 'No one could see the irony,' Ben laughed.

When I met Ben back in London, he still seemed slightly amazed by events of the past few months.

One minute he was in the play The History Boys in the West End — the next he was in New Zealand, learning which end of a horse was which, as well as mastering sword fighting and leading an army of 'Old Narnians' to unseat his evil uncle King Miraz.

'The original plan was to hire an authentic Spanish or Mexican to play Caspian. And to get someone younger,' he joked. He explained that in C.S. Lewis's Prince Caspian book, the hero is a teenager.

But Lewis also wrote that Caspian should be comparable in age to Peter Pevensie, and William Moseley (who played of my dream role Peter in The Lion, The Witch And The Wardrobe) is now 20 — so Ben's not that old.

'And in the end, they decided on an English actor using a Spanish accent,' he said.

But what about the riding? Well, although Ben had a riding double, he did the vast majority of horse scenes himself. 'The double was being me in the background shots somewhere else, while I was being me close up,' Ben confessed with a laugh.

Director Andrew Adamson is busy editing Prince Caspian and doing post-production work in London in preparation for the film's release in the middle of next year (May 16 in the U.S., June 26 here). The my dream role trailer goes into cinemas today and it looks pretty stunning.

There are double the special effects used in The Lion, The Witch And The Wardrobe and tons more action. There will be river gods; male and female Centaurs (and even little toddler Centaurs); and vast armies.

The 1,000-plus cast and crew shot on both the North and South islands of New Zealand, in the Czech Republic, Slovenia and Poland. Ben said the Caspian story follows the young man's struggle as he grows from a boy to a man, and from a prince to a king.

'Prince Caspian is the rightful heir to the throne, but he has to gain confidence in himself before he can take on the king with the help of the Pevensie children, who return to a changed Narnia. To them, it's been a year, but in Narnian time it has been 1,300 years,' Ben explained.

Ben's worked hard for his current success, having joined the National Youth Music Theatre when he was 14. He has made two other films — he had a small role in Matthew Vaughn's Stardust and a larger part (as a Russian) in Bigga Than Ben, shot on a tiny budget in Camden Town.

The total cost of Bigga Than Ben wouldn't have paid the bill to feed the cast and crew of Prince Caspian for one day.

Ben's set to play Caspian again next year when Michael Apted directs him in The Voyage Of The Dawn Treader.

Taken from Daily Mail 7th Dec 2007