“His career is the one”: the actor Barry Keoghan has always wanted to emulate
Perhaps it’s no surprise that Barry Keoghan gets a fair bit of stick online, because how on earth do you cope sensibly with going from being a complete unknown from Ireland to an Academy Award nominee, a pop star’s boyfriend and playing Ringo Starr in a monumental Beatles biopic all within five years?
That’s not to excuse the feedback Keoghan gets from certain corners of the internet, however, which seems excessive to say the least and revolves around the way he looks and dresses, and the fact that he’s not with Sabrina Carpenter anymore. It can’t be about his acting, because he is very, very good at that indeed, and, if anything, seems to be getting better even since his movie-stealing turn in The Banshees of Inisherin back in 2022.
This year, for instance, he was brilliant in the throwback heist thriller Crime 101 as one of the most hateable characters I’ve witnessed in a long time, part-psycho, part-incredibly annoying juvenile displaying the worst aspects of Gen Z, doing his best to rob Chris Hemsworth of all his cash and, once again, pretty much stealing a film while doing it.
Keoghan is evidently ambitious, that’s clear not just from the kinds of roles and films he takes on but the fact that he broke into movies by basically sending homemade auditions to directors he liked on Twitter, including Crime 101’s director Bart Layton, who subsequently handed him a part in 2018’s American Animals.
And prior to that, Keoghan had a supporting role in another adventurous director’s movie, namely Yorgos Lanthimos’ The Killing of a Sacred Deer, alongside his future Banshees castmate Colin Farrell. Since then, he has admitted to picking projects very carefully, although nobody could really have predicted the acclaim he would get for Banshees four years ago, picking up almost a clean sweep of major award nominations, including a Bafta win for ‘Best Supporting Actor’ as the troubled, ill-fated boy Dominic Kearney.
Keoghan would win another Golden Globe nomination a year later for Emerald Fennell’s controversial high-class farce Saltburn, and it included a couple of scenes that the actor really had to go all out for, the notorious bathtub licking and a finale in which he stripped completely naked and whipped around a country house to ‘Murder on the Dancefloor’.
He’s evidently not an actor afraid to take risks, and for inspiration, he looks to another star who found fame early and took the same path of most resistance. Asked about his acting influences, Keoghan told The Upcoming, “Leonardo DiCaprio. Because, in his early career as well, he just transformed into these characters, like What’s Eating Gilbert Grape and The Basketball Diaries. His career is the one I’d like to follow. He engages you. It could be a scene of him just walking around the room. In every scene, he gets you engaged 24/7. That’s an amazing skill, being able to engage [the audience] every time.”
DiCaprio did indeed opt for more dramatic roles over more mainstream hits, even in his late teens, no matter if they paid more money. He was also award-nominated before the age of 20, picking up his own ‘Best Supporting Actor’ Oscar nod for Gilbert Grape all the way back in 1994.
Aside from the forthcoming Sam Mendes four-part Beatles movies, which will arrive in April 2028, Keoghan will be seen later this year in a French-made drama called Butterfly Jam alongside Riley Keough, and there are rumours he may make a cameo in Matt Reeves’ The Batman Part 2 next year.
