The two female directors Barry Keoghan is dying to work with: “Those ladies are at the top”
In his brief but incredibly memorable career, Barry Keoghan has worked with some truly monumental directors. Two of his first major roles came in Dunkirk and Killing of a Sacred Deer, which were made by Christopher Nolan and Yorgos Lanthimos, respectively. He was excellent in Martin McDonagh’s The Banshees of Inisherin and
What’s particularly interesting about the Irishman is how many great female filmmakers he’s worked with. Arguably, his most famous role, an aspirational middle-class student in Saltburn, was directed by Emerald Fennell. Their combined antics, some of which were improvised, made a lot of headlines when the film came out in 2023. Even his appearance in the Marvel flop Eternals got him in front of the great Chloé Zhao, which must have made that wretched experience just a little bit more bearable.
Women behind the camera came up as part of an interview Keoghan conducted with the NME in 2020. Speaking about his future, he named the directors with whom he was most keen to work, and all of them had one thing in common.
“I want to work with Andrea Arnold, Lynne Ramsay, and Céline Sciamma, who did Portrait of a Lady on Fire. Those three ladies are at the top of my list,” he revealed. “Their films have such strong stories; Celine’s Girlhood has stuck with me since 2014. The performances are so raw that I thought it was real. It let me in so much, and I always find that fascinating, how a director can get actors and actresses to trust them like that.”
The potential collaboration Keoghan seems to be most excited about is with French director Sciamma. He has spoken at length in several interviews about his love for her 2014 film Girlhood (‘Bande de filles’), which chronicles the life of a Black teenager living in a rough neighbourhood just outside Paris. Portrait of a Lady on Fire (‘Portrait de la jeune fille en feu’) is probably her most famous work, along with its follow-up, Petite Maman. Sciamma’s work regularly deals with themes of gender, sexuality, and social expectations of women and girls. At the time of writing, she is still only in her mid-40s and has so much more to give the world of cinema.
Lynne Ramsay is a name that should get a lot more love than it does. The Scottish artist has only made five feature films since 1999, but all of them are noteworthy in some form or fashion. Arguably, her most well-known is We Need to Talk About Kevin, her adaptation of Lionel Shriver’s novel, but the likes of Ratcatcher, Morven Callar, and You Were Never Really Here all demonstrate her complete mastery of the cinematic arts. Her latest films, 2025’s Die, My Love, is currently receiving rave reviews. Themes of childhood and motherhood often dominate her work.
You might be wondering why this article mentions “two” directors when Keoghan lists three. That’s because he actually managed to tick one off his list. In 2024, he starred in English filmmaker Andrea Arnold’s coming-of-age drama Bird, playing a young father struggling to connect with his free-spirited daughter. You can read our review of that project here
