The one genre Barry Keoghan has always wanted to try: “That was so beautiful”
While it might feel like Barry Keoghan exploded onto the scene with his role in Saltburn, he had been steadily building his repertoire for many years before that.
In 2017, he got people talking with his role in Yorgos Lanthimos’ The Killing of a Sacred Deer, playing a scheming young man out for revenge against a surgeon. Following his blockbuster debut as part of Chloé Zhao’s doomed Marvel project, Eternals, he bounced back with a fantastic performance in The Banshees of Inisherin. The following year, he had his infamous run-in with a plughole, and that was that.
The Irish star has already amassed quite an impressive CV in his relatively brief acting career. With rumours that he is set to play Ringo Starr in an upcoming biopic and plans to have him appear as the Joker in the sequel to The Batman, that’s not going to change any time soon. According to the man himself, however, there is one genre he hasn’t tried yet that he would love to get stuck into.
When promoting the movie Bird to The Film Stage, Keoghan spoke about a scene where his character had to sing and dance at a wedding. “Dancing and singing isn’t necessarily my thing, to be fucking honest,” he asserted, but he also admitted that he wasn’t against doing more of it. “I’d love to do a musical, by the way. Like La La Land. That was so beautiful. That was so beautiful, incredible. But I think the effort of Bug trying to learn a dance for a wedding is breaking, and trying to sing for a toad is heartbreaking. I think within that effort, it’s beautiful to watch someone really sincerely go for it. Don’t get me wrong: when people can sing, it’s so fucking attractive. I can tell you that.”
Bird, a 2024 film by director Andrea Arnold, is about the relationship between a young girl named Bailey (Nykyia Adams) and her father (Keoghan). The main conflict arises when Bug announces he’s marrying a woman he’s only known for three months, turning Bailey against him. Part of their reconciliation involves Bug learning a dance routine for the reception, despite it not being his ‘thing’.
“With Bug, the singing and the dancing was feeling comfortable with Andrea and a license to be my entire self,” the actor explained. “I’m not gonna say “silly,” but a place of letting your body take over and just move. She created that.”
Part of Keoghan’s duties on this film included appearing in the music video for ‘Bug’, a song performed by his fellow countrymen Fontaines DC. He wouldn’t be the first actor who can’t sing to star in a musical. Pierce Brosnan set the template for Irish performers outing themselves as completely tuneless when he stank up Mamma Mia! in 2008.
Keoghan has proven himself more than capable of tackling a wide range of characters and genres in either the smallest indie production or the biggest of big-budget romps. If somebody were to come along and invite him to star in a musical, he would surely smash that too. He might need a little help from autotune, but there’s nothing wrong with that.
