Ben Barnes stays forever young in 'Dorian Gray'

Ben Barnes found out rather quickly just how territorial literary fans can be when he was cast as Oscar Wilde's titular eternally youthful, and equally damned, dandy in Dorian Gray, screening as part of TIFF 09.

"You're not blonde!" offered the British actor as an example of early criticism about not physically mirroring the character. "It's such a wonderful character arc but I did get a lot of threats from people who said, 'This is my favourite book ever, don't make a hash of it'."

Barnes, perhaps best known as Prince Caspian in the Chronicles of Narnia series, did, of course, take the plunge into the morally murky waters of temptation, unguarded indulgence and the pursuit of beauty - but not without reservations.

"I was wary of playing the character but it was also the kind of challenge I was never going to be able to pass up," he admitted. "[T]o play a 21-year-old who goes from innocence through debauchery and celebrity and then is this sort of depraved, diseased, cynical psychopath at the end....It was quite a journey and one I tried to relish."

With an enviable head of thick, dark hair and large, soulful eyes, Barnes believably inhabits a character known for his exquisite, jaw-dropping beauty, but sums up having his looks front-and-centre in one word: embarrassing.

"It's perception, isn't it? I knew that I'd be asked that question a lot and that I'd be embarrassed and look at my shoes but I mean, you know, I think you just kind of have to act that confidence. But I also think the real power of the story is in him staying young forever - that's the real key to the power he exudes. If you imagine somebody walking into the room you haven't seen in 20 years and they haven't changed at all, I'd be terrified. It was an interesting power to toy with."

Director Oliver Parker concedes that he took some artistic liberties in casting Barnes as the poisoned hedonist but insists that it's a reflection of modern standards of beauty as much as the actor's own mysterious charm.

"I suppose it's quite interesting to even discuss what [makes] a beautiful man today," opined Parker. "There are plenty of gorgeous, young blond men, but in a way [they] doesn't necessarily stand for the more populist vision of that image, that ideal. I always imagined [Dorian Gray] as dark. And there's something about Ben that is particularly intriguing. You don't quite know his origins. He obviously has a lovely, charming, beautiful, classical construction of the face but he's got these dark eyes. And so there's something inherently intriguing about his look."

As the story goes, most of Gray's hangers-on agree are equally intrigued and infinitely curious about this beautiful man who doesn't age, desperate to touch the face of perfection and, not one to resist temptation, Gray is only too eager to abide.

On-screen, Parker hints at the depths of Dorian's sexual appetite, which culminates in a provocative, orgiastic scene where the lovely lad dabbles with both women and men. Though sex scenes are notoriously, well, unsexy in practice, Barnes admits it was smooth sailing. After the first day.

"I went into the trailer on my very, very first day of shooting and I'd just been introduced to these 50 men who were gonna be on the crew and I said, 'Somebody's forgotten to put my costume in my trailer'. And they said, 'No, no costume today'. I said, 'But it's the first day, that's ridiculous!'" he laughs. "So it was a bit of a baptism by fire but it was good because the character was trying to explore all these new experiences and that was certainly one."

And one that contemporary audiences won't likely find that out of place given our demand for instant gratification and beauty-at-any-cost mentality. In fact, Parker sees Wilde's story, though originally published over 100 years ago, as having particular relevance today.

"The themes of this particular story are the power of youth and the power of beauty and our obsession with it. The fact that we're almost enslaved by that obsession and the fact that today we are even more capable of destroying ourselves in pursuit of beauty - I think it makes it particularly current," he said. "To pick up a laser or a razor and [be able to] change your physique and meet some mythic notion of what is beautiful. Is that disastrous or what? Discuss."

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Dorian Gray screens as part of the Toronto International Film Festival, running to September 19.