• 18.02.04 - Hyrise Publicity Photoshoot

• 17.06.08 - ‘The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian’ Prague Premiere x 23
• 19.06.08 - ‘The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian’ UK Premiere x 51

Appearances

• 22.06.08 - Emporio Armani - MFW Menswear Spring/Summer 2009 x 2

I’ve been unsuccessful so far in finding photos from the Paris premiere. If anyone has any they’d like to share, please email me at admin @ barnesfan.com. Thank you!

Thousands of Narnia fans and a host of celebrities paraded the green carpet for an event billed as the UK’s biggest-ever film premiere.

Ten thousand fantasy fanatics descended on the O2 Arena in London to watch The Chronicles of Narnia Prince Caspian on a screen measuring 91ft by 38ft - the largest ever constructed in Europe.

Kids dressed as lions, witches and Telmarine soldiers, teenage girls in posh frocks, as well as overly excited parents trekked down the 190m-long red and green carpet along with stars of the film and other famous faces.

Telmarine soldiers - characters from the film - mounted plinths along the walkway dressed in chain mail, helmets and masks with some wielding swords in mock battle.

Young British stars of the film were excited to be back on home soil, having attended premieres all over the world.

Ben Barnes, who plays Prince Caspian, said he was so overexcited that he was “babbling like an idiot”.

“This is the pinnacle, it’s the climax,” he said. “Despite all the people behind me I can guarantee I’m the most excited person here.”

He added: “I still find it difficult to watch myself because it’s difficult to suspend your disbelief enough to see a prince and not yourself but hopefully everyone else will see Prince Caspian and I think it’s a really exciting, engaging film.”

Director Andrew Adamson said: “People say not to work with children but I highly recommend it.

“They energise you, on those days on set when you’re tired, they are not. They give you the energy back.”

Also, watch for a gallery update tonight with photos from the UK premiere!

A movie starring a former Kingston student has boasted the biggest ever film premiere.

According to organisers, the premier of The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian has beaten records for a film’s opening.

Up to 10,000 people are expected to attend the film’s premier, which will star Ben Barnes, at London’s O2 Europe.

It is thought the event has seen the construction of Europe’s largest cinema screen at a massive 91ft by 38ft.

Ben, who grew up in Wimbledon, bagged the title role after studying English and drama at Kingston University.

The heartbreaker cut his teeth treading the boards as the male lead in the university drama department’s production of Don Juan.

The young actor spent months filming for the film ahead of its scheduled release.

The movie is a sequel to The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe which took £381m worldwide in 2005.

Ben will be rubbing shoulders with a number of big names at the event - something he’s no stranger to having already performed with Robert De Niro and Michelle Pfeiffer in fantasy flick Stardust.

Liam Neeson - who voices the character Aslan in the movie - is among the stars expected to attend the red carpet event.

The film’s director Andrew Adamson and comedian David Walliams are also on the guest list.

In the film Ben plays a much younger character - a 12-year-old boy - who is fighting to claim his thrown in the magical world of Narnia.

The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian is due to be released in cinemas on June 26.

To start off here’s an interview out of New Zealand.

Source: The New Zealand Herald

“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.

• 01.06.08 - 2008 MTV Movie Awards x 34
• 01.06.08 - Target and Converse Movie Awards After Party x 10

Thanks to Barnesfangal for pointing the video out.

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• 25.05.08 - ‘The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian’ Sydney Premiere x 21
• 27.05.08 - ‘The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian’ Melbourne Premiere x 6