Interview

KA: You stopped making $200,000 movies.

BB: Exactly. But Bigga Than Ben played at the Edinburgh International Film Festival. It never came out! Now it's getting released in a few cinemas in the U.K. They've cut it
together with really cool music and got the likes of Pete Doherty on the soundtrack.

KA: Has all the attention you've been receiving come as a shock?

BB: Yeah, but I've been working steadily at it since I left school, moving up the ranks, as it were. When I first came out of university, I had my obligatory six months out of work and was pulling my hair out, wondering what the next step was. It was such a miserable state of affairs for me in London. There just didn't seem to be any work. I saved up some money and headed over to the States and bashed on a few doors and got a few meetings and took some auditions to play L.A. lifeguards and all sorts of things I was entirely inappropriate for. I managed to get a pilot, but it wasn't picked up. Then the work in London started slowly coming.

KA: Did you have any trepidation about playing a fantasy hero?

BB: Luckily for me, Caspian is supposed to be scared and running for his life most of the time. When I got to the set, I was fairly intimidated by the size and scope of the film. I wasn't really prepared for it. I found myself having to learn all these new skills-horseback-riding, sword-fighting, and accents. There was sort of this Narnia boot camp that I had to throw myself into for a few weeks
before we even started shooting.

KA: There was a period earlier this year when you couldn't walk a block without seeing your
face on a poster.

BB: When they first showed me the publicity campaign, I said, "Is that sensible?" They said, "It's called Prince Caspian, so we've got to have the prince on the poster." It was a little disconcerting, you know, when I went over to the States to publicize the film, seeing myself 15 stories high. When you're driving down Sunset Boulevard and you see Harrison Ford and then Will Smith and then Robert Downey Jr. and then yourself, you think, What am I doing up there?

KA: At least your new higher profile ensures that you won't be scrambling for parts in tiny independent films.

BB: I still do independent work. In two weeks I start shooting a version of The Picture of Dorian Gray that is obviously much darker, much grittier-it's more of a gothic horror story.

KA: Looking at 15-story-high posters of yourself seems like the perfect grounding for playing a
character like Dorian Gray.

BB: There have been some very interesting
parallels. I don't really see the point in making a film unless you can think of a good reason to do it. We live in this celebrity-obsessed, youth-obsessed culture, and it just seems to make a lot of sense to make this Dorian Gray film right now. Especially for me, as somebody who's . . . I don't know if "on the brink" is the right term, but sort of at the beginning of getting attention from the media and from other people. Dorian Gray is also somebody who, at the beginning, doesn't want to be looked at, doesn't really want to be noticed, but then
begins to realize the power of youth and the power of people wanting to be around him. Obviously it goes very dark, which I'm hoping in real life my part won't. I suppose you have to be aware, on some level, of the attention being focused on yourself even to accept a part like Dorian Gray.

KA: But being cast as Dorian Gray is like being told you are the ultimate in beauty, that people should sell their grandmothers to look like you. That must give you so much confidence.

BB: I don't know. You still get these waves of doubt that come over you, for example, when you get a bad review or you accept a part and think, "Oh, God, what have I just accepted? I can't do that." I don't think that's something that will ever go away in me.

KA: I've never taken you for a fragile soul.

BB: I hide it well. It's in private. You should doubt in private.

KA: Is there anything you're scared of doing?

BB: My brother is organizing a half marathon in London called Run to the Beat. You run to
music. They wanted me to do it to help promote the charity, but I can't because I've got such
terrible knees. I can't run. I start getting twinges. If I were filmed running, it would be awful.

KA: You're really going for the iconic gay writers, aren't you? Alan Bennett, Noël Coward, Oscar Wilde . . .

BB: Sexuality is a topic that has huge shifts in -society. Attitudes toward different sexualities change, but the actual sexuality of a human being is something that's consistent, and it's consistently interesting, and so people write about it. But having said that, I think that for all the characters I've played-obviously Caspian-sexuality hasn't been the most interesting thing about them.