The heart of the kingdom

Ben Barnes might be Hollywood's new heart-throb, but he knows his destiny is to have his head chewed off and one leg thrown in the dustbin.

The 26-year-old British actor isn't talking in metaphors about being the subject of bad press reviews - though he does call those "hurtful".

Barnes is referring to the fate of the action figures that have been made in his image as Prince Caspian in the new Chronicles of Narnia film.

"It is cool, but then I remember what I did with my action figures, which is chew the heads off and smash them and make them fight each other," Barnes said.

"So my destiny is with one leg in the dustbin."

Since landing the role of the young prince who is the rightful heir to Narnia's throne, Barnes' face has been plastered over movie posters and billboards around the world.

With his long locks and good looks, it didn't take long for the comparisons to Lord of the Rings star Orlando Bloom to start.

"I've had a few [comparisons]," he says. "I've had Johnny Depp, which I like. I've had Keanu Reeves. Orlando Bloom - fantasy, long hair.

"People feel the need to do that for the first six months or a year that you're on the scene, because it allows people to attempt to pigeonhole.

"It kind of goes away as soon as you establish yourself.

"It will be three months before someone is the next Ben Barnes - I hope, anyway."

Prince Caspian is the second film based on the series of books by C.S. Lewis and directed by Andrew Adamson.

This time around, the Pevensie siblings - Peter, Edmund, Susan and Lucy - are magically transported back from England to the world of Narnia one year after the events of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe.

But the young kings and queens discover that more than 1300 years have passed in Narnian time and during their absence Narnia has been conquered by the Telmarines and is now under the control of the evil King Miraz.

The four children meet Prince Caspian and they join forces to find Aslan, rescue Narnia from Miraz's tyrannical hold and restore magic and glory to the land.

Barnes said it was a little intimidating bringing this much-loved book to life.

"There's a certain level of pressure and responsibility because the stories are so well known," he said.

"If people are fans of the story, which I am, you want to try to be faithful to the character - not be some sort of action hero Prince Charming, which he just isn't."

Fortunately for Barnes, he had four young co-stars who had been there and done it all before in the first film: Georgie Henley, Skandar Keynes, Anna Popplewell and William Moseley.

Moseley, who plays Peter, said Prince Caspian was much harder than the first film, which was made three years earlier.

"It was actually more of a challenge this time," 21-year-old Moseley said.

"We had kind of like a magical experience on the first one.

"On this one I expected a lot of myself, I wanted to up my game, I wanted to make my character more complex and I wanted to do all the stunts myself."

As a movie, Prince Caspian is much darker than the first, which suited its maturing cast.

Moseley was particularly pleased to be able to make Peter "so much cooler" than he was in the first film, thanks to a better haircut, a bit of muscle and some attitude.

"In the first one he's so selfless and nice . . . but in this one, I really liked the fact that he wasn't perfect, and the fact that he's an anti-hero and he's angry and nasty and rude to people and doesn't care," Moseley said.

Shooting this movie was a bittersweet experience for Moseley, whose character doesn't appear in the next movie, The Voyage of the Dawn Treader.

He has spent several of his formative years working on the films, but Moseley says he's ready for whatever comes next.

"In some ways it's kind of like hitting the real world of acting, and I have been to Narnia and I have been blessed with this, because I have sort of been thrown through the wardrobe, to use the analogy," he said.

"So as Peter's ready for the next challenge, I'm ready for it too."

And he'll always have his own action figure to keep as a memento.

"It's really weird though," he laughed. "They always make me look like I'm Arnold Schwarzenegger, and I'm like, 'I don't look like this'."