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Ten years ago Ben Barnes never would have participated in Glamour's new column Tell Me Something I Don't Know. Now he's throwing caution to the wind.
A lot has changed for the 41-year-old actor over the course of nearly two decades in Hollywood. Starring as Prince Caspian in The Chronicles of Narnia franchise in 2008, Barnes was quickly poised to be the next great British heartthrob along the lines of Twilight-era Robert Pattinson—or, as Barnes would describe it, “the young protagonist in the fantasy thing.” From there came Dorian Grey, Killing Bono, Westworld, Marvel's The Punisher, and the list goes on.
However, as any “young protagonist in the fantasy thing” would probably tell you, that level of exposure leaves you feeling, well, exposed. “I used to care so hard about every single little piece of criticism,” Barnes tells me over Zoom from his airy kitchen in Los Angeles. “I didn't like doing interviews and I was quite cautious, even with my acting choices.”
Cautious is not the word I'd use to describe the man speaking with me with an easy smile and a refreshing mix of playful banter and genuine openness. And though Barnes is clearly grateful to his legion of die-hard fans and millions of Instagram followers, this hard-earned confidence did not come from fandom popularity alone.
“For 20 years I've been playing these characters that everyone else has kind of written and it's their agenda,” Barnes says. Then, around 2017, his mother was battling cancer while he was supposed to be filming the second season of HBO's Westworld. Despite playing the hit sci-fi series' resident “tilted-hat douchebag with big dick energy,” he was able to take time off to be with his family and take stock of his goals. “I became a bit braver with my work and began to chase my old-school dream that I had as a teenager,” he says. Like many teenage boys, the London-born actor always wanted to be in a band. In October 2021 he finally released his first album at 40 years old, an EP titled Songs for You.
That same year Barnes became the face of yet another “fantasy thing” but not as the roguish young hero. As General Kirigan (a.k.a. The Darkling) in Shadow and Bone—the Netflix series based on Leigh Bardugo's popular Grishaverse novels—he gaslighted his way into viewers' hearts with a toxic combination of manipulation and charm. By season two the surprise villain is openly embracing what Barnes calls his “vengeance era.”
When I ask Barnes to title this latest chapter in his life, he tosses the ball back to me. “You'll know more snappy Taylor Swift references than I will,” he jokes. He may be right about that, but as he opens up about making bolder choices and creating his own album from scratch, the answer comes to him more naturally than he expected. “I feel free,” Barnes says with a weighted breath of relief. “It took me a while to get here, but the really nice upshot of doing it at 40 is that people sort of say, ‘Oh, I love watching you [try something new] because it made me feel like I can too.’”
