Has anyone been as prolific as Barry Keoghan in our social feeds over the past few months? Ok, maybe Jeremy Allen White, but given that Keoghan has more recently bared his abs in the name of advertising, slash sending the internet into a frenzy, it feels right to probe what is behind the Irishman’s washboard exterior and piercing blue eyes.
To some, Keoghan seemed to go stratospheric overnight, thanks to a chilling performance and some ungodly scenes-you-can-never-unsee as Saltburn’s Oliver. To others he’ll always be that weird kid in The Killing of the Sacred Deer. Though in fact, the actor has been pursuing his Hollywood dreams with the same vigour as he licks bathwater since he was 16. After an unsettled childhood in foster care in Dublin he got his first movie gig by answering an ad and has been pushing barriers with weird and wonderful roles ever since... It just took dancing naked to Sophie Ellis Bexter and becoming a viral meme for the world to know his name.
The toast of indie and arthouse directors, there’s no denying Keoghan is a uniquely talented performer. Yorgos Lanthimos, who directed Keoghan in The Killing of a Sacred Deer, says, he’s “the sweetest man, but can seem sinister and dangerous in a split second.” While his director for Marvel movie Eternals, Chloé Zhao, says, “he can’t be tamed and you wouldn’t want to, because he will be a constant reminder of the wilderness.” It’s apt given that Keoghan (pronounced ke-yow-gen) means wolf cub in Gaelic.
So is he more lone wolf or leader of the pack? We break down the Irish actor’s rise to fame and the moves that propelled him to thirst trap status in 2024.
An unsettled childhood
Keoghan hails from Summerhill, on the north side of Dublin’s inner city. With his dad absent and due to his mother’s affliction with a heroin addiction, he and his brother Eric went into foster care when he was five. The pair moved between around 12 different homes and families throughout his childhood. When Keoghan was 12, his mother died of an overdose and he went to live with his grandmother.
While he told Esquire magazine he remembers very little of his time in foster care and before the age of 16, Keoghan does recall using performing to entertain his mother at her bedside, who he recalls was “always chirpy and always making sure we were good.” He recalls in particular dancing to Elvis. “A Little Less Conversation. Yeah, man, she loved that. It was her favourite song,” he told the magazine.
Koeghan has paid tribute to his mother on Instagram with family photos, writing that, “I feel your presence alongside me on this journey.”
And in spite of difficulties, the now 31-year-old looks back on the time as having given him the drive that has helped him to succeed. “You know what, I’m proud of it. I’m not going to say what happened was the right thing, but it’s certainly given me a lot of ammunition — ambition because of childhood,” he told Esquire.
Becoming an actor by chance
The actor has spoken of growing up watching talent such as Marlon Brando, James Dean, Paul Newman. Though a childhood spent in a deprived area means Keoghan says he had never fostered ambitions of acting when he was young. However, he was using his aptitude for embodying others to his advantage as a teen — namely to enable pranks and score some laughs. As he told GQ in a cover interview, “I was expressing. Doing impressions, putting on accents for prank calls, going to the shops and becoming different characters each time.”
So, what did he think he’d end up doing? "I thought I was going to be a footballer or a boxer or something like that — I was into sports," he told Vice. Something which remains true to this day as he’s invited multiple interviewers to join him at a boxing practice. It’s also evident in the arms he’s taken to showing off in sleeveless red carpet looks.
It took seeing an advert for an acting job to inspire an unexpected change of ambitions. In the same year he was in and out of school for making “trouble” Keoghan has spoken of how he answered a call in a window, aged 16. The casting director was specifically looking for non-actors who owned a dirt bike. "And I had two of those — I was a non-actor, and I had a dirt bike," he has said to GQ.
The project was Mark O'Connor’s 2011 Between the Canals, and Keoghan reportedly called him for weeks until he cast him. The production was awaiting funding, though Keoghan says he didn’t know what this meant, so carried on his relentless pursuit to get the part, “all I saw was, ‘time off school, get paid. F***, I'm gonna go to that," he said to GQ.
In 2017, Keoghan went on to do a short course of acting training at a workshop called The Factory. From there he got an agent, though the Dubliner has certainly persisted with his ad-hoc approach to scoring roles. And to maintain his own unique diction and direction when it came to roles. He says he is anti formal acting schools, as he doesn’t want to be the same as other actors. “I like that I’m sorta different. I like that I mumble,” he told Esquire.
Carving out a career playing misfits
Keoghan’s resume is filled with roles as oddballs as well as sociopaths, and a spattering of proudly Irish parts. His early monotone part in The Killing Of A Sacred Deer in 2017 as Martin (who he has called “a weird little freak kid”) put him in good stead for dark performances in films such as Marvel’s The Eternals where he plays mind-controlling superhero Druid and The Batman as the Joker. A role director Lanthimos even predicted he’d play after his unsettling performance in his 2017 movie.
It’s a style of acting he relishes. In The Green Knight as Scavenger, Keoghan recalls “anything I did would freak out” lead Dev Patel. And his deadpan performance as Dominic in The Banshees of Inisherin is a huge highlight which earnt him a Best Supporting Actor BAFTA.
These roles seem a far cry from the sex symbol status he’d later earn from Saltburn and its press tour. Case in point: the scene where his marriage proposal to Siobhan in The Banshees of Inisherin is the butt of a joke (”there goes that dream,” he says after her blunt refusal to consider his offer).
Though when you think about it, Keoghan is the ideal person to make a serial killer sexy given his disregard for boundaries. In fact he’s told multiple outlets how the grave scene was his idea, something he felt his way into after asking for a closed set to explore Oliver’s motives and figure him out further, once he’d already “submitted to his obsession” in that bathtub section.
As for the internet-storming scene in which Oliver dances around naked to Murder on the Dancefloor in Saltburn, he sees the humanity behind the psycho persona. “It’s not a normal thing to see, but it’s a normal thing to do, because I know we all do it at home. Every single one of us, we all dance around naked.” Contrary to popular belief that Keoghan is exhibiting his own unique stylings, it is in fact a routine strictly choreographed by Polly Bennett. Well, he couldn’t decide his characters every move. Though he does take full credit for his form, “I think it was gorgeous to look at a figure like that roaming the manor,” he’s said in an interview about the clip.
A don’t ask, don’t get the part mentality
It’s no coincidence that Keoghan seems made for many of his roles, as he’s been pursuing some of them for years. Methodical in plotting his career after his first acting job, he kept a list of directors he wanted to work with and has been known to send audition tapes uninvited for parts he’d like to play.
In 2013, Keoghan posted on X, formerly known as Twitter, that he wanted to be in a Marvel movie. "@TheRealStanLee Stan Lee, Please Make me a SuperHero :)," he wrote. And in 2019, the actor was cast as Druig.
For his part in The Batman he sent a video of himself dressed as the Riddler walking down the corridoor. He didn’t get cast in that role, which was given to Paul Danno, but instead fulfilled the premonition from Lanthimos to play the Joker.
Then there was his part as menacing gangster Jonny in Top Boy. Director Ronan Benett told the Independent, “sometimes you can’t believe your luck. I was writing an Irish part for the final season of Top Boy when Barry Keoghan got in touch to say he was a huge fan of the show and could he be in it.”
Roman continued, “I know Barry knocks on doors when there’s a project he is passionate about, and I was only too happy to open this one. Barry brings intensity and authenticity to everything he does and we were delighted when he came on board.” Indeed, given he was raised in a notoriously troublesome area named Summerhill, it seems apt for him to play part of the Irish contingent in Hackney’s fictional Summerhouse-based series.
Furthermore, he arguably manifested his part in Apple TV+’s current Steven Spielberg miniseries Masters of The Air by insisting in an interview with GQ, “me and Steven, we’ll work together.” He once auditioned for the lead in Steven Spielberg’s movie Ready Player One, though he didn’t get it.
The bromance which bolstered his internet fame
You could say it’s all down to the dance scene, or his ability to play three relatives off against each other in Saltburn, that cemented the fact that there really is something rather sexy about Barry Keoghan. When asked how it feels to be looked at in a new light, Keoghan in typically candid style, told GQ, ”it’s nice, man. It’s nice not just being looked at as the weird-looking guy, the unique f***in’ freaky little freak man-child, freak child-man, whatever you want to call it. It’s nice to see people kind of look at you in that way. I’ll be honest. It is nice.” It’s nice then...
Though, arguably, his press tour antics sealed the deal for anyone who was on the fence about his sex symbol status after seeing him play the psychotic Oxford student. And in no small part due to his meme-able moments with co-star Jacob Elordi. There’s the time when Elordi lent down from his stool to pick Keoghan’s water (yes, he towers over his 5”8 co-star when they’re fully erect), and the TikTok viral clip of the pair *almost* kissing at the film’s LA premiere.
@whomagazine They actually might kiss. Jacob Elordi and Barry Keoghan attend the premiere of Saltburn and honestly? I’m buying tickets to every single movie session. #jacobelordi #jacobelordiedit #barrykeoghan #barrykeoghanedit #saltburn #priscilla #euphoria #jacobelordistyle
♬ they might kiss x promiscuous -
But is it for real? “I’m really flirtin’, ” Keoghan told GQ. “We were constantly close. It ain’t just for the cameras and the premiere[s]. Me and Jacob — he’s like a brother to me, honestly. I think when you’re comfortable with someone, you can be as close as you want, you know what I mean? It’s not like, ‘Oh, don’t come near me’—it’s like, I’m comfortable. When I’m comfortable around people, I’m comfy.”
Though, the love between these two wouldn’t have had a chance to blossom if Elordi hadn’t stepped in (to do a Barry) and ask for director Emerald Fennell to consider him for the part. In an interview with Vogue UK Elordi joked: “[Fennell] she said she wanted Timothée Chalamet for it. And I said ‘Have you thought about Barry Keoghan?'”
People may have commented that Keoghan at 30 looked a tad old and boxing-toned to be playing the part, but clearly it’s been a blessing.
Dad life
While the rest of the cast stayed and hung out in a hotel to shoot Saltburn, Keoghan was living in an 18th-century watermill living a domestic life. He has joked he felt left out of how much time they got to spend together, though he was very much otherwise occupied looking after his newborn son, Brando Keoghan. Yes, he named him after his childhood acting inspiration, Marlon.
Of the time, Keoghan told GQ, “It was probably the best time of my life, to be quite fair. Havin’ a baby boy, and leadin’ a movie. It was the best time of my life, I must say – yeah.”
Last July, it was confirmed that Keoghan had split with his son’s mother, Alyson Kierans, who he met in a London bar in February 2021. And while the pair remain private about this, the actor has praised her as a parent publicly. He told Esquire, “She’s an incredible mother. She has the maternal instinct. Brando is obsessed with her. And she’s never done this before, either, but I’m learning from her.”
He added that his grandmother is his other model for fatherhood, “She raised ten [children]. She had a great, what do you call it, attitude about everything. Man or woman, that’s what I base it on. She was my father and mother in one.” He also praised his baby for helping him to discover more about his own strengths and weaknesses. “When he was born, the gods reached down and gave him eyes that can see your soul and a laugh that can make you cry, and with those extraordinary gifts he is quickly becoming an actor for all time.”
Becoming everyone’s favourite Babygirl
Keoghan’s recent run of press appearances with Elordi and the rest of the Saltburn cast as well as his Masters of the Air co-stars, including Austin Butler and Callum Turner, has not only got him noticed for being among a scrum of Hollywood’s most fancied men, but also seen him become a style icon.
Fluid looks, plenty of statement jewellery and a lot of sleeveless moments have seen him christened one of the internet’s Babygirls. Aka the new breed of adorable, not-afraid-to-be-vulnerable men with a penchant for gender fluid looks.
We can largely thank his stylist Ilaria Urbinati for the latter, who also works with Donald Glover. “Barry is just very playful and adventurous,” Urbinati tells Vogue UK. “He takes to fashion well, and he really understands it and is knowledgeable about designers. But he is also light about it, in that he’s having fun with it. He takes it seriously but doesn’t overthink it.”
In fairness not many people could pull off a red checkered Louis Vuitton suit and pearl jewels, nor a furry Burberry sweater vest or white plunging, sleeveless Dolce and Gabbana suit. Pushing boundaries in fashion as much as in film has clearly become the MO for Keoghan.
New romance
Yes, the internet might wish now more than ever that he was single, but it seems to be increasingly clear that Keoghan is dating Disney singer Sabrina Carpenter.
This week, the pair were seen in West Hollywood for a dinner date, according to People, and in photos captured by the outlet they look very much into each other. Reports of their relationship began in December, when they were spotted looking cosy in a car park together.
Though all is not lost for those thirsty for Barry, as he shared this completely gratuitous Valentine’s shoot for dating site Bumble. No you won’t see him on the app, but at least you’ve seen him in his short-shorts. We’re sure fellow Irishman Paul Mescal is proud of him for repping them. And good for Barry, we bet it was “nice” to have a sexy moment behind the camera.
Where to next?
Keoghan’s next anticipated project is by another beloved indie director, Andrea Arnold, who made Fish Tank and American Honey. We know it was shot in Kent, though the plot remains under wraps. We do know however, that it stars Franz Rogowski, from queer drama Passages, in which he played Tomas, the egotist at the centre of a love triangle. It promises to be nothing if not tense with these two starring. And yes, Arnold is one of the directors who has long been on Keoghan’s list.
Now he’s found his leading man energy, Keoghan is also set to star in a movie about outlaw Billy The Kid by Hunter Andrews. He also told GQ that he wants to make a movie with Hunter about his own life, called The Cut Man. Given his aptitude for manifesting dreams into highly successful realities, we await that one with bated breath.
