Ben Hopkins

Part two of the Ben Barnes cover feature for Clash’s film issue. Photo by Alessandro Dal Buoni.

Discotheque

Barnes spent two weeks in a studio recording his numerous vocal performances for the film with the assistance of Joe Echo, who wrote almost of the songs that he performs, and producer Mike Hedges whose numerous album credits include work with The Cure and Manic Street Preachers. “I was sent these songs and I was vaguely learning them, but Joe was teaching me how to sing this rock stuff because I’d done jazz singing and soul stuff, but I’d never done screeching, screamy [vocals] and I wanted it to be ridiculous.”

Barnes found inspiration for his Eighties rock god moves from a number of sources, most notably for his first performance in the film – a cover of Eddie & The Hot Rods’ power-pop anthem Do Anything You Wanna Do. “For that one I was doing Jagger,” he states, imitating the Jagger swagger as he tells of how he watched the video of the Jagger / Bowie duet Dancing In The Streets for inspiration. “Jagger gets away with some outrageous stuff. I mean, Jagger sometimes looks like a rock legend and sometimes looks like someone’s uncle who’s a bit drunk.”

And that’s a someone’s uncle being drunk moment?

“Yeah, basically I’m playing that for most of the film.”

Further coaching was needed for Barnes to encapsulate his character’s softly comical Irish brogue. The only catch was the limited time he had beforehand to practise with a dialect coach: a full two hours. “When I landed I thought I’m just going to do the accent from now until I leave Ireland,” he reminisces. Evidenced by his willingness to drop into the accent at random intervals throughout this interview, it clearly worked. But spending eight weeks in Northern Ireland while replicating the accent on and off set tends to have that effect. “I was a bit disappointed when I found my [regular] voice again,” he laments.

Sometimes You Can’t Make It On Your Own

One of the lowest ebbs in the life of the fictional Neil McCormick comes when Bono asks if his brother Ivan (played by Misfits actor Robert Sheehan) could join U2. McCormick responds, typically, with “Well, you can’t have him!” And so commences a thread of sibling rivalry that provides dramatic tension throughout the film’s entire running time. In reality, Ivan continues to play guitar in a band that plays weddings and functions (Barnes tells a possibly apocryphal story that they’re called 29 Fingers because the pianist is missing a finger).

Barnes and Sheehan developed a relationship that echoed that of their screen characters. Staying in apartments a floor apart, the pair would bond over movies and Guinness.

“I hate him, the little shit,” snaps Barnes with mock disgust, his tone smoothing as he continues: “He’s so much fun and he’s so funny and he’s very, very bright and horribly talented. He can do comedy to serious, he can turn it on and off like a switch. And he doesn’t have to try at all, seemingly. And that was really annoying. It felt like a younger brother who’s slightly more talented than you.”

One

If there was one person on set who commanded everyone’s admiration, it was Pete Postlethwaite. Originally scheduled to play the gangster Machin, Postlethwaite’s ill-health meant that he couldn’t get the necessary insurance required to play such an integral role. Instead, he took the smaller role of Karl, the McCormick brothers’ camp London landlord. It would prove to be his last screen appearance.

When Barnes speaks about Postlethwaite, his infectious demeanour drops and he looks to be on the verge of tears. His sorrow is immediately palpable. “He clearly wanted to be working and he was one of those actors who looks in your eyes and you believe what he’s saying,” begins Barnes, the strength and rhythm of his voice fading dramatically. “He’s got that very poignant line where he says, ‘Remember only this: the mark of a man is what’s left when fame falls away.’ He was ill at the time and I didn’t feel like it was that landlord saying it to my character. I felt this was Pete Postlethwaite, this amazing, legendary actor, telling me what’s important in life. I still find it very moving. And I’m very honoured to have acted even in just two or three scenes with him.”

It would prove to be especially emotional for the film’s director Nick Hamm too, as he and Postlethwaite had been firm friends since the Eighties.

The mention that Karl is a very different character for Postlethwaite to play soon enlivens Barnes’ spirit. “He was like, ‘I’m sixty-four and this is the first time I’ve played gay’,” reminisces Barnes. “And he proper goes for it!”

No Line On The Horizon

In awe of the melodic voices of Freddie Mercury and soul legend Donny Hathaway, Barnes admits to becoming more of a fan of U2 during the course of making Killing Bono. He picks the band’s 1987 single I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For, which features prominently in the film, as a particular favourite. “Whenever I hear it, I think, ‘Ah, this is my song from the film.’ Just the way it starts, the introduction of it is so anthemic and you know that something amazing is coming.”

U2 have already given their blessing to the film (in reality, Bono and McCormick are firm friends), leaving Barnes to offer his concluding thoughts on how he hopes it will be received.

“I think it deserves to have the reputation of The Commitments or In Bruges or The Full Monty,” he asserts. “I really think the story of the miserable underdog is just as important as the story of the King of England. A biopic of Neil McCormick shouldn’t be any less valid than a biopic of George VI. He had his stammer in the way and he [McCormick]… had his personality!”

Part one of the Ben Barnes cover feature for Clash’s film issue. Photo by Alessandro Dal Buoni.

King Caspian X, Dorian Gray… Neil McCormick? Those are three names that you’re unlikely to hear listed together anywhere outside of the filmography of actor Ben Barnes. Not least because at this moment in time, the successful music journalist and author Neil McCormick isn’t the household name that his teenage self predicted he would be.

That could all be about to change with the release of the new movie Killing Bono, which is loosely based on McCormick’s autobiographical book Killing Bono: I Was Bono’s Doppelganger. Together with his brother Ivan, the McCormicks strove desperately to become rock superstars while their classmates U2 took the fast lane to the very top.

As McCormick himself explains: “I went to school with Bono. In mid-seventies Dublin, we formed rock bands, blew the lid off the school disco and set off together to conquer the world. U2 made it all the way to Wembley Stadium. I got about as far as Wembley Coach & Horses. Bono became a rock star, and I had to settle for being a rock critic.”

McCormick’s compensation for what he calls “being played for laughs as a geeky loser” is being portrayed on screen by Barnes, best known for his lead roles in two of the three The Chronicles of Narnia films. As Barnes joins Clash in a sprawling suite in The Dorchester, it’s immediately apparent why he has become the focus of scores of fan sites and Facebook profiles. Even prior to styling, he’s tall, slim and his teeth gleam like pearls: his heartthrob status is without question. Sporting a vintage Mott The Hoople t-shirt and a Tamla Motown man-bag, he’s just an immaculately coiffured whisker away from looking like a rock star on his own merit.

With Or Without You

Killing Bono’s journey from page to screen was a lengthy one, and Barnes himself came to the process late. “I think they were waiting for me,” he smiles self-deprecatingly. When he was first sent the script he decided not to even read it. As the film’s schedule clashed with his own he chose to ignore it knowing that if he loved it, he wouldn’t be able to do it. But while working in Australia on the third Narnia film The Voyage of the Dawn Reader, the opportunity arose again. Barnes called on the help of fellow Narnia cast member Will Poulter to practise his lines, while another actor Shane Rangi (who plays Aslan, the minotaur and others) was enlisted on guitar for an impromptu recorded screen test. “He came and played Satisfaction by the Stones and played guitar for me off screen. I stood there and sang and it looked like crap,” sighs Barnes. Undefeated, for his second attempt he held his laptop (complete with an internal webcam) to his face and hollered the lyrics at the screen. A rudimentary method it may have been but “it worked. You never know where the jobs will come from.”

Barnes credits much of his initial interest in the role to the script that was crafted by The Commitments writers Ian La Frenais and Dick Clement. “It’s the first script I ever read that made me laugh on every single page,” he states. In his enthusiasm, he often delivers huge flourishes of speech: “I’m a huge Motown and soul fan so The Commitments was always a big film to me. This came along, and I saw the same writers, it was set in Ireland, it had rock music in it; it was set in the Eighties so the costumes were going to be amazing and the hair would be ridiculous. And then I started reading it, praying it was good and it was really, really funny.”

Even Better Than The Real Thing

Central to the humour is the character of Neil McCormick. When Barnes speaks, it’s easy to establish whether he’s talking about the real person or the exaggerated persona that we see in the movie.

Of the former, Barnes says, “He’s quite a sweet man. He sent me an e-mail saying that some of his friends saw the film and they recognise a lot of his younger self in my performance. That’s really nice to hear because it’s not like I was doing Walk The Line or Ray, where everybody knows what those people are like so you’ve got to do that kind of close portrayal.”

The latter, however, is a different story. “He’s always making the wrong decisions, always putting himself first. When Wham were popular he tries to be like Wham, when Sting was popular he tries to play reggae and be like Sting, when Jagger’s popular he tries to do those moves. If it’s just to be more current and more popular, you’ve got no credibility.”

Ultimately, Barnes chose to play McCormick as a fictional character, inspired in part by Richard E. Grant’s similarly misguided Withnail. The character and the person intertwine in part as McCormick still harbours vague dreams of reaching rock’s premier league. “He can’t quite believe that he’s not a rock star,” says Barnes. His tongue is perhaps in cheek, but only just…