Barry Keoghan names the best performances by his favourite actors
Barry Keoghan has seen his star rise exponentially over the past few years. After breakout roles in Dunkirk and The Killing of a Sacred Deer, Keoghan properly burst through as part of Martin McDonagh’s chilling small-town drama The Banshees of Inisherin. What followed was one of the year’s most memorable performances in Saltburn, which will live on in infamy for years to come. With plans for him to play The Joker in Matt Reeves’ The Batman sequel and a potential role as Ringo Starr in Sam Mendes’ ‘Beatles’ tetralogy on the horizon, the future looks very bright for the boy from Dublin.
As a relatively new star, people are interested in what inspired Keoghan to get into acting in the first place or, more specifically, who. In conversation with Little White Lies, the Eternals star divulged the names of two performers he admired, and they were both quite surprising in the context of his own career.
“Leonardo DiCaprio,” he began with. “I know he’s everyone’s favourite, but this is before I had any clue about acting. The Basketball Diaries, for me, is incredible.” Keoghan’s love for DiCaprio is no joke, as he tweeted in 2018 “I met LEONARDO DICAPRIO tonight. That’s it! I’m done. I’m retiring from acting. Job done.” The actor also arranged a Leo-themed birthday cake for his then-girlfriend Sabrina Carpenter, as she celebrated turning 25.
While he’s become a heartthrob off-screen, Keoghan’s roles are never usually very desirable. He has a habit of playing outcasts, people who are ignored by wider society that he then gets back at down the line. DiCaprio has played roles like this, but he’s more famous for being a leading man. Perhaps Keoghan saw something of himself in The Basketball Diaries because of DiCaprio’s character’s issues with heroin. His mother, who passed away when the young star was only 12, also suffered from heroin addiction, which Keoghan has been very candid about in interviews.
DiCaprio wasn’t the only actor that Keoghan named as one of his favourites. “Paul Newman, too,” he said. “Cool Hand Luke. That’s my life lesson – play it cool, always. We all like to play it cool, right? And we all have a breaking point.” In a separate interview with Little White Lies, he went into more detail as to why he enjoyed the likes of Newman and James Dean so much as a child. “Maybe it was the absence of a father for me,” he theorised. “Just trying to get a sense of how men behaved.”
As revealed on an episode of Hot Ones, the Irishman once tried to eat 50 raw eggs in a similar style to Newman’s character in Cool Hand Luke. “I don’t think the eggs were cooked,” he revealed (via Yahoo). “I was also very drunk. I think I got to eight eggs. And I think Paul Newman did eat 50 eggs, by the way. And I was still training as I was still trying to as I was getting sick. That’s the thing. Didn’t work out.”
Interestingly, Newman is another actor best known for playing the main characters. He’s a leading man through and through, which Keoghan has thus far not been. Perhaps this is what the 32-year-old truly desires, to be seen on the same level as his idols, or maybe he’s happy to admire them from afar while carving out his own path. Either way, on his current trajectory, Keoughan looks set to obtain a similarly legendary status as the two men he called his heroes.
