Ben Barnes channels his inner rock star to play a frustrated wannabe singer/songwriter with dreams of being bigger than U2 in Killing Bono, a hilarious comedy very loosely inspired by true events. 30 year old Barnes, who's best known to moviegoers as Prince Caspian in the Narnia film series, is absolutely terrific in this inside look at a struggling band's lengthy - and frustrating/heartbreaking - journey in search of success in the highly competitive music industry.
In our exclusive interview, Barnes talks about the real man who inspired his character, the bizarre costumes and make-up, singing, and how he was able to put his bad dancing to good use in Killing Bono. We also chatted briefly about one of his next major projects: The Seventh Son.
Exclusive Ben Barnes Interview
Congratulations on a great performance. That was fantastic.
Ben Barnes: "Thank you."
Your character frustrated me and he made me really mad, but I always liked him. How did you pull that off?
Ben Barnes: [Laughing] "You should meet him in real life."
Is Neil McCormick really like that?
Ben Barnes: "A little bit but he’s much, much older now so he’s chilled out a lot. But, the infuriating thing is even though he’s a very successful music journalist, he works in a field that he loves and he’s very good at it and well respected, he still harbors these fantasies. He still thinks it's going to happen for him at age 50."
So nobody has given him a reality check and told him it's not going to happen?
Ben Barnes: "No. He says, 'If Mick Jagger can do it, why can’t I?' I think that was one of the director's major [decisions]. He said to me, ‘I wanted to cast a nice guy and then have him make infuriating choices.' He was like, 'If I cast somebody with a darker temperament, then when he does these things he would put you really on edge and you really wouldn’t invest in him at all."
Definitely.
Ben Barnes: "There is a moment when we were watching the premiere and there’s a moment when Bono says, 'Why don’t you come support us at Croke Park and he says, 'I’d rather play to 500 of my own fans then 50,000 of yours,' and that’s a real quote from a real band. One of our producers was a big music agent; he was actually U2’s agent and that quote came from a real band - I don’t know which band. Someone in a real band said that about supporting a real big band. It was like a real thing that people have passion to do it their own way, and manly pride and individual creative pride."
"Yes, he was utterly infuriating and I wanted to make the character slightly ridiculous. In that moment, when you’re watching that moment with the audience and he says, 'I don’t want to support you, but thanks for the offer,' the whole audience will groan. Which is kind of proof of two things: proof that they find him really irritating but also that they care. Because if they haven’t invested by that point, they wouldn’t bother reacting."
Exactly. And that's how I reacted to the scene.
Ben Barnes: "I was kind of pleased with that reaction because it’s not a Hollywood American dream story. It’s a story about failure. It’s a story about idiots who fall over instead of playing rock concerts."
It’s a story about pretty much normal people. We all have these dreams and ambitions and we sometimes won’t let them go, even though reality smacks us in the face.
Ben Barnes: "Yes, we find it very difficult to let things go. Especially in this modern age where anyone can go on a reality show and be famous for a minute. It’s a byproduct of some talent or some creative passion. People think if you’re a well-known actor or musician or artist, or even business magnate or whatever, then you'll become famous, but people want to skip to the end. If you do that, then it’s not worth anything because you didn’t really earn it. I think that’s part of Neil’s problem in this movie is that he wants to be successful so he tries to be George Michael, then he tries to be Bono, then he tries to be Freddy Mercury, then he tries to be Mick Jagger, and then he tries to be Bowie, and then he tries to be Sting. Whatever is popular that minute, he wants to be that."
That meant you also had to try to be those musicians on screen. So how easy was it for you to channel these guys?
Ben Barnes: "Yes, I watched a lot of videos particularly, honestly, more for the dancing. I grew up listening to Cream, The Stones and The Beatles and The Eagles, and U2 to a certain extent, so I was familiar with a lot of their singing styles. I did like Sinatra tribute concerts at school and I sang in choirs. I always kind of mimicked people’s voices and things. I like doing stupid voices. [Laughing] My dancing is so bad that I found that that was actually an asset for this role. My dancing was used for the greater good; it's used for comedy value, which is what it should be used for, I think."
Was it fun to actually get to go crazy and show off stupid moves?
Ben Barnes: "Oh God, it’s so freeing to be that uninhibited, to stand in front of a crowd, even if you are actually paying the crowd to scream at you in the end. We did that scene in the pub and it looks like we are playing Wembley and then the camera pulls out and it's two old guys who don’t understand what’s happening. But I had to play it like I thought we were at Wembley. I am lunging in leather trousers and Bowie makeup. You could see actually...it was great because you could see actually one of our camera men had been around on 50 movies and you could see his shoulders shaking behind the camera with laughter at how ridiculous I was being."
Then you knew you got it right.
Ben Barnes: "Yes, exactly, so that was comforting."
With the costumes and the make up, did you have a favorite look they gave you?
Ben Barnes: "I had a least favorite: the New Romantic. The New Romantic look was appalling. It was so funny, there was one of the guys in the crew was a gaffer, like an electrician, and he was a big guy with tattoos, a shaved head, and he was like 50 years old and he said, 'Yeah, I used to be a New Romantic.' I was like, ‘You did not!’ It’s just so funny, these people. The other guys were like, 'I was a mod,' and, 'I was a rocker.' It's so funny that we all go through those kind of phases, because for my generation it was not cool then. When I was 18, boy bands were cool. You can never quite get it right, I suppose."
I guess not.
Ben Barnes: "I like the stadium look at the end because I had really long hair before I shot the film and I had to cut it all off and then wear a wig for the end. So I liked having the hair back and the leather trousers and the vest. That kind of really rock look, I liked that."
The more dangerous look.
Ben Barnes: [Laughing] "Because I can’t get away with it in real life."
Earlier you said that you listened to U2 to a certain extent. So, you weren’t a huge U2 fan?
Ben Barnes: "I didn’t really grow up with U2 because my Dad didn’t...I think a lot of your early music influences are what your parents listen to and then you kind of rebel a bit. My rebellion was going to Motown and Stevie Wonder and stuff like that, rather than punk rock. When I was at school my friends would like U2. I always thought they were great songwriters. I’ve always loved 'Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For,' 'One Love,' 'Streets Have No Name,' and I just think they are great lyricists. He’s got great energy on stage. Their intros are so anthemic."
"But I think the point is, it’s not a bio-pic of U2. The first 10 minutes feels like a bio-pic of U2 and then it follows these other two clowns through the next 10 years instead. I think U2 just represents success in the film. It could have been The Beatles; it could have been about Stuart Sutcliffe almost. I heard the first drummer for The Beatles, before Stuart Sutcliffe, apparently now is an ice cream or hotdog vendor or something like that."
Oh wow!
Ben Barnes: "They made a documentary about him. It's that kind of thing that is just so heartbreaking in so many ways. Sometimes it just doesn’t pan out the way you think it will. And it's such an antithesis of the kind of Hollywood movie and the American dream that that’s why I wanted to do it, because the film was all backwards."
I heard you really loved the script from the first time you read it.
Ben Barnes: "Yes, I was in Australia actually filming the third Narnia movie in armor and I was using my sword as a guitar in my trailer pretending to be this idiot, and I was loving it."
You should have used your Narnia outfit in the movie.
Ben Barnes: "That would have been really bizarre."
Definitely bizarre. The whole story could translate from being in the music industry to being an actor.
Ben Barnes: "Absolutely, when I first started out, I had that - everyone has that at first, unless you hit in something massive straight away. From 20 to 25, I was doing plays and small, tiny parts in films and things, and then I would have nine months of nothing. And then you'd go up for these big movies and audition 10 times and you nearly get it but you wouldn’t. All actors, particularly, and musicians hear 'no' much more often than they hear yes. Rejection was definitely something that I could relate to. It’s a little better for me now, but it’s definitely something that people are aware of and everyone lives through disappointment in their lives."
Did you use any of your own personal rejection experiences going into this character?
Ben Barnes: "Absolutely, of course. I think every experience you live through is something you draw on for characters. If you can’t relate to the character, it’s probably a character you shouldn't be playing if you don’t understand how you could go about playing it."
That makes sense. And you had to do an Irish accent. Was that easy?
Ben Barnes: "Well, it was one of my favorite accents. It always has been."
Why?
Ben Barnes: "I had done 10 or 11 movies and I think seven of them or eight of them are in different accents other than my own. I’ve played Russians and Spaniards and Americans and Yorkshire men, and onstage I played Australian. I’m used to working with different accents. Often when you first learn an accent it’s a hindrance, because it stops you being real. You're thinking about how you sound. Once you have kind of - fingers crossed - mastered it, then it's something that can actually really help you. With this role, it was the first time I’ve tried method acting and staying in character for the whole shoot, even when I went home. I stayed in the accent when I went to the pub and ordered drinks. I think if you can test it in that way and get away with it, you feel more confident."
What’s your least favorite accent to tackle?
Ben Barnes: "You know what the really hard ones are? Obviously when you're doing Australian or Irish or American, Canadian or Scottish, you’re still speaking English. I think the hard ones are where you are speaking English with a Spanish accent. When you're doing an accent and translating back into a language you already know, that’s hard. You have to get it a bit wrong as well, the grammar and things like that. I think that’s more tricky."
I’m sure the real Neil has seen the movie, right?
Ben Barnes: "Yes, he actually came on set about halfway through the shoot."
And?
Ben Barnes: "He was there on the day I held the gun up to Bono, actually when I was having my breakdown moment of like, 'I can’t bear this. This person has ruined my life and it doesn't seem fair.' But I know it's not his fault, it's my own fault. That’s why you see me kind of give up and grab the gun. I’m just in a crazy moment. I've hit my head on a steering wheel and I’m dazed and confused and cold and out of it. He knows he’s doing something really stupid and he’s never going to go through with it. But, yeah, he came and watched that day. I think he was a bit concerned that I was making him into a buffoon, that I was turning him into a clown, which I absolutely wanted to because he deserves it. He made himself the anti-hero."
Right.
Ben Barnes: "So that’s what I was kind of channeling. When he saw the film, more importantly when his family and friends saw the film, they were like, 'That’s exactly what he’s like!' So he was pleased in the end. He supported the film. He came to all the premieres, and now the story of the movie is now the story of his life. We changed so many things to make it more cinematic and more dramatic, and now his brother thinks, 'You ruined my life!,' when, in fact, it wasn’t quite like that."
Did he critique your performance?
Ben Barnes: "Not really. He was always just very, very supportive and positive about it, except for the beginning he was like, 'You're making me into an idiot,' and I was like, ‘You are an idiot!'"
You’ve done films based on books before, but this was actually a real person. Is that an extra weight?
Ben Barnes: "Actually, I did it once before, the first movie I ever did was called Bigger than Ben and I played a Russian hoodlum in London. The character I was playing didn’t speak hardly any English in real life. I never met him, but I spoke to him over the phone once and he was like [in a deep, heavily accented voice], 'Hey Ben, nice to speak with you,' and I was like, 'Hello!' He was six foot five and huge. But it’s the opposite of doing Walk the Line or Ray or Ali, these people that people know and you have to do an impression of them. I had the freedom not to do an impression because they weren’t famous people. My interpretation of him is almost more well known than the real Neil."
I have to ask about The Seventh Son, I hear that it’s not going to stick super close to the novels.
Ben Barnes: "No, it's not. I think because it's not like Twilight or The Hunger Games or one of these series that people are obsessed with and want every detail to be correct or exactly as it is. I think there's more license, because they are not as well known, to kind of make it really filmic. We have a brilliant director Sergey Bedrov who made the film Mongol. I think we just want to make it really visual. A lot of the book takes place in a hut and in a house and that's not particularly exciting. So, I think they are making it with lot more action. My character in the novel is like 13 and obviously I’m not 13. We are just making it slightly more adult as well."
And you get to work with Jeff Bridges.
Ben Barnes: "Who is a genius. In the last two years I will have worked with Colin Firth, and I just did a movie called The Wedding with De Niro, Diane Keaton, Robin Williams and Susan Sarandon. And then I get to work with Jeff Bridges in the next year, so it’s been actually incredible watching all these people at work. Watching the icons of our age, not just to watch them but to act with them and learn from them is insane. I think I’m most excited about Jeff Bridges."
And you did get to star in Pete Postlethwaite's last film.
Ben Barnes: "Absolutely, that’s another one I should have mentioned. Spielberg said he was the best screen actor of his generation. It would be difficult to argue with him, really. He was just an incredible actor and it was amazing he was 64 trying to play parts he never played before and challenge himself. He was very sick while we were filming, but he still would refuse to sit down during scenes. He was just working with everything he had, so, yes, that was a real honor."
And back to Killing Bono... Why should people see it? It has a weird title, and it’s a comedy. Are people going to get that?
Ben Barnes: "I think if you’re a massive Bono fan or you’re the kind of person who if you met Bono you'd like to slap him, I think both of those groups of people would enjoy the ride of this movie because it’s so ridiculous [Laughing] And I think most people fall into one of those two categories."
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Killing Bono hits theaters on November 4, 2011.
