Barry Keoghan has opened up on feeling “sickened” by accusations he’s an absent father, trying to avoid weird acting roles, and that final Saltburn scene, which he insists had “no enhancement”.
The Irishman sat down with beloved British broadcaster Louis Theroux on season three of The Louis Theroux Podcast. The episode with Keoghan, star of The Banshees of Inisherin, The Batman and the upcoming Peaky Blinders film, is available on Spotify from Nov. 5.
“I don’t search or seek out roles that have a demeanor of being evil, I just want to show range and get to play different parts with the directors I love,” Keoghan told Theroux. “But yeah, I do want to get away from the weird parts… I’ve started to understand that less is best, you know, people can get really tired of seeing your face and when you look at the actors like Daniel Day Lewis and Christian Bale, they don’t show up for everything, and they picked up parts quite cautiously so I’m trying to learn from that.”
In Emerald Fennell’s Saltburn, Keoghan’s character infiltrates an upper-class British family and slowly kills them off, thereby inheriting their enormous estate. The final scene sees him dance through the mansion, naked, to “Murder on the Dancefloor” by Sophie Ellis-Bextor.
Theroux said to Keoghan about the scene: “The speculation was that your willy had been enhanced,” to which his guest replied: “No, wait, enhanced? It was all me. It was a thing that I didn’t really bat an eyelid to. I would bat an eyelid if it didn’t fit the story. I remember me and Emerald having the chats, and it started off with my clothes, and she’s like, we just need to make it a bit more ownership.”
Barry Keoghan in the Peaky Blinders movie.
Netflix
When asked about his “distinct” appearance, Keoghan also said that the comments he’s received about his looks are “absolutely disgusting.” The actor said he has confessed to looking up what people have written about him on social media: “It’s sad to kind of pick someone’s appearance apart. Especially on this TikTok as well.”
“People can sit there and make videos and be like, ‘I don’t like his face,’ ‘He looks weird’ or ‘He looks evil’ and just pick you apart… It’s lucky I have tough skin to be honest. A movie comes out and people can just really judge you and pick you apart online sometimes it’s just sad to see people like that.”
Staying on the theme of social media comments, Theroux also asked Keoghan about the online accusations of him being a “deadbeat” father. The star shares a son with former partner Alyson Kierans and is now reportedly dating American singer Sabrina Carpenter.
“If I didn’t have tough skin or the strength to have, I wouldn’t be sitting here,” Keoghan said. “Of course, [his childhood is] going to affect me being a father when I had no blueprint to take from. People just read that [as] laziness and go, ‘Oh, that’s no excuse to be an absent father.’ I’m not an absent father. But it’s just, again, people love to use my son as ammunition or whatever.”
He added that the more public attention he’s received, the less he has posted about his child: “I don’t think it’s fair to put my child online.”
He continued: “And because I reigned that in, people draw a narrative and go ‘absent father, shit, deadbeat dad,’ and more disgusting things I wouldn’t even repeat. Just the audacity of some people, man. It sickens me, makes me furious.”
Keoghan and Sabrina Carpenter.
Kevin Mazur/Getty Images
In 2021, Keoghan was struck by a flesh-eating virus before production started on The Banshees of Inisherin that he said nearly killed him. “I got this necrotizing fasciitis,” he said. “That was quite a scary experience… I remember [director] Martin McDonagh coming to the hospital to visit me and being like, ‘Are you still able to do this movie?’ and I’d just had surgery. They wanted to amputate the arm… and they were telling me, ‘If we didn’t catch it, there’s a chance you could possibly die.’”
When asked how he got the wound that was infected and caused the virus, Keoghan said it was with a bottle after “a disagreement in a pub.”
Keoghan also spoke candidly about his childhood, spent in foster care, and how he lived with 13 different families. His mother, who he described as “lovely” and “gorgeous,” struggled with an addiction to heroin. “You don’t forget waiting on the social worker steps and waiting for the new family to come and play with you in the playground they have in the office and see if it’s going to work and then go with them to a whole new area and a whole new home,” he told Theroux.
The Louis Theroux Podcast is available on Spotify now.