Benjamin Thomas "Ben" Barnes (born 20 August 1981) is an English actor, best known for his portrayal of Caspian X in The Chronicles of Narnia films Prince Caspian and The Voyage of the Dawn Treader.Ben Barnes was born in London to Tricia Barnes, a relationship therapist, and Thomas Barnes, a professor of psychiatry. He has a younger brother, Jack.
Barnes was educated at two day independent schools for boys: at Homefield Preparatory School in Sutton in South West London and King's College School in Wimbledon in West London (where his classmates included the film actor Khalid Abdalla and comedian Tom Basden), followed by Kingston University in Kingston-upon-Thames in South West London, where he studied drama and English literature and from which he graduated with BA Honours in 2004.
Barnes began his career in musical theatre. As a teenager, he spent a few years as part of the National Youth Music Theatre, whose alumni also include Jude Law and Jamie Bell. At 15, Barnes landed his first professional job as a drummer in the West End musical adaptation of Bugsy Malone. He was briefly a singer in the pop boyband Hyrise, which was in the running to represent the United Kingdom in the Eurovision Song Contest in 2004 with the song "Leading Me On"; however, they lost out to James Fox and "Hold Onto Our Love". Barnes began working in television in 2006, including a guest appearance on the UK series Doctors. That same year, he joined the ensemble cast of a West End production of The History Boys, in which he starred as the sexually provocative Dakin, a role originally played by Dominic Cooper on stage and in the film The History Boys.
Barnes made his feature-film debut as Young Dunstan in 2007's Stardust, directed by Matthew Vaughn and based on the Neil Gaiman novel of the same name. Barnes then starred as a Russian hoodlum named Cobakka in Suzie Halewood's Bigga Than Ben, which was released in 2008 in the United Kingdom and other European countries.
