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When Ben Barnes saw the final cut of Prince Caspian for the first time in New York two weeks ago, he did what many people do after watching a 2½-hour movie … and drinking a large soda. He headed for the men's room.

Nothing unusual there. What was unique, though, were the throngs of teenage girls waiting outside the theater, practically ambushing the handsome Barnes—who plays Caspian's title character—and co-star William Moseley in their short trip to the "loo," as they call it back home in England.

Ben Barnes as Prince Caspian

Barnes, in his first major feature, and Moseley—who plays Peter Pevensie and was already a bit of a teen idol back home in England—politely pushed their way through the gawking girls and made it safely into the bathroom to take care of business.

Meeting with members of the media the next morning, Barnes was still snickering about the previous evening's events.

"Yeah," he chuckled, "I had to break the shocking news to the fans: Even Prince Caspian gotta pee."

If Barnes, 26, doesn't make it as a movie star, he could consider a second career as a stand-up comic. In two interviews with CT Movies (a couple months ago on the phone, and again recently in New York), he had his questioners in stitches on several occasions—especially when talking about his sudden fame, which is about to explode with Caspian's worldwide release this Friday.

Barnes' face is the dominant image on the movie poster, plastered everywhere these days. You've probably seen him on any of the countless TV spots in recent weeks. And, of course, he'll soon be in a toy store near you as a bona fide action figure—a concept that has Barnes shaking his head.

The Prince Caspian action figure

"Scary, isn't it?" he says. "It's exciting when you hear you're going to be an action figure, but when you think about it, you realize that what this entails is probably some 6-year-old smashing my head against a table! That's what I did with my Transformers and my He-Man! I was like, 'Fight each other!' Little kids chewing on them, that's the reality of it. And people will be playing the video game yelling, 'Die, Caspian, die!' That's what's going to happen."

Beneath the humor is a young man who is very serious about this role for a number of reasons. He's playing one of his childhood heroes—Barnes has been a Narnia fan since he first read the books with his dad at the age of 8—and, as a student of children's literature at Kingston University, he has had the opportunity to dig deeper into the books than most. So he comes to the role both as a giddy young fanboy and as a grown man who sees the character more philosophically.

"I was a massive fan of the books as a kid," he says, "so it was something I grew up with. From that point of view, Caspian had some sort of iconic status with me. But another thing that draws me to his character is that he's not a prototypical action hero. He's just a boy struggling to come to terms with his own growing up and his place in the world.

"It might seem like reading too much into it, but I sort of read the story as almost Hamlet-ian. Caspian's father has been killed by his uncle [for anyone who's read the book, that's not a spoiler] and he spends the rest of the film trying to deduce whether vengeance is going to be the best policy for him. In the process, he's forced to become a leader, and he's forced to re-direct his animosity."

When asked about the spiritual themes that author C. S. Lewis weaves throughout the Narnia books, Barnes is even more philosophical.

"It's definitely something I've thought about," he says. "But I think it's dangerous to think about that when you're shooting the movie, because we're making a contemporary film for a 2008 audience, for people who don't necessarily know the books or are not necessarily interested in that side of it—and we still want it to be exciting for those people.

Caspian and Peter at Aslan's How

"As for the spiritual themes, I'm not a fan of spoon-feeding themes in films. I find myself patronized very easily by those kinds of films. But when I watch a film, I always ask, 'What's the point? What's the message?' And I don't think in this film there's one specific clear message. There's a lot of little messages about self-belief, belief in the people around you, and having faith in something bigger than yourself. You don't necessarily have to give it a name."

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