Ben Barnes can currently be seen in Netflix’s new fantasy-adventure series “Shadow and Bone”, and he opened up about the ups and downs of his career in an extensive interview with Variety.
Barnes, 39, recalled landing his first major role as the titular prince in “The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian”. While the film made more than $400 million worldwide, the box office was considered disappointing given that the previous film in the “Narnia” franchise brought in just under $750 million.
As Barnes recalled, he went from becoming “the new prince of Hollywood” to watching all his career opportunities suddenly evaporate.
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“Naively, it felt like a mark of things to come,” he said of landing the role as Prince Caspian.
“Princes become kings, you know? You get on the escalator and if you work hard and you commit to your characters and do it in good faith, DiCaprio and Brad Pitt are at the top and that’s where you end up,” he continued.
However, he learned the hard way that’s not necessarily the way Hollywood works. “It’s not an escalator. It’s not even stairs. There’s no up,” he explained.
“It took me a little time to understand that these are waves,” he added. “I’ve found that this particular metaphor has — oh no, I’m going to say this water metaphor has held water, that’s bad! But you’re going to have to learn to surf.”
Gradually, he began landing more roles, starring in features such as “Seventh Son” and “Dorian Gray” and roles in Netflix’s “The Punisher” and HBO’s “Westworld”.
“It’s impossible not to get caught up in the game of your name is worth this after having done ‘Narnia’,” he said.
“And then you do a little indie film that you think has an interesting ending, and nobody sees it. And then your name is worth this, and therefore, this job that you’ve auditioned hard for and met with the director of and felt like you’ve got on famously with is going to go to this other person who didn’t audition. I think there are only two options at that point. One is to play the game better or to change what the prize is — and that’s what I ended up doing.”
After adopting that mindset, he said, “I made myself a promise, from now on, let’s simplify how we choose what we’re going to do. Let’s do projects that you would want to watch.”
That philosophy, he explained, is how he wound up working on indie “Seventh Son” and ultimately led him to “Shadow and Bone”.
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“Despite me not having utter faith in the script of [‘Seventh Son’], there is nothing that would have stopped me working with that cast — on that scale, nothing,” he said of the 2014 fantasy film that also starred Jeff Bridges, Julianne Moore, Alicia Vikander and Kit Harington.
“So it didn’t matter to me that I didn’t fully understand the tone of it,” he added. “But that’s why it was so important for me when we came to ‘Shadow and Bone’ to feel like I really understood the tone and I had a seat in the table.”
“Shadow and Bone” is streaming on Netflix now.
