Barry Keoghan

Barry Keoghan (born October 18, 1992, Dublin, Ireland) is an Irish actor known for his idiosyncratic, sometimes unsettling performances in such films as The Killing of a Sacred Deer (2017), The Banshees of Inisherin (2022), and Saltburn (2023).

Childhood and early career

Keoghan was raised in the hardscrabble Dublin neighborhood of Summerhill. He never knew his father, and his mother struggled with drug addiction. Keoghan, along with his younger brother, Eric, spent time in various foster homes during their childhood and eventually lived permanently with their grandmother, aunt, and elder sister Gemma. His mother died of a heroin overdose when Barry Keoghan was 12 years old.

His first experience with acting was in Christmas plays in secondary school. When Keoghan was a teenager, he answered a public casting call posted in a Summerhill shop window and was hired for a small part in the film Between the Canals (2011), a crime drama helmed by Irish director Mark O’Connor. Keoghan then appeared in several other films, including two more gritty O’Connor movies about characters on the edge of mainstream Irish society, King of the Travellers and Stalker (both 2012). Keoghan gained wider recognition with a role in the 2013 season of the dramatic TV series Love/Hate (2010–14), set in the criminal underworld of Dublin. Keoghan’s heartless character memorably guns down a cat and commits other disturbing acts of violence. During this time Keoghan briefly studied acting at what is now Bow Street Academy—The National Screen Acting School of Ireland, in Dublin.

Keoghan had a string of film parts over the next several years, including in ’71 (2014), about the Troubles; the crime drama Trespass Against Us (2016), featuring Michael Fassbender and Brendan Gleeson; and Light Thereafter (2017), in which he had his first starring role, as a young artist with autism.

Break into Hollywood: Dunkirk and The Killing of a Sacred Deer

Keoghan had a remarkable year in 2017, appearing in two films that would introduce him to the world. He played George Wills, a young civilian sailor aiding the Dunkirk evacuation, in Christopher Nolan’s World War II epic Dunkirk, which also starred Cillian Murphy and Tom Hardy. Keoghan then appeared as Martin, a mysteriously sinister teenager who upends the lives of a surgeon (Colin Farrell) and his wife (Nicole Kidman) in Yorgos Lanthimos’s The Killing of a Sacred Deer.

In 2019 Keoghan appeared in two episodes of the well-received miniseries Chernobyl, about the Soviet-era nuclear disaster, and returned to the Irish criminal underworld in the film Calm with Horses. Two years later he had a supporting role in The Green Knight, starring Dev Patel, which was based on the Arthurian legend. Also that year Keoghan entered the Marvel Cinematic Universe, portraying the comic book character Druig in Eternals, directed by Chloé Zhao.

In 2022 Keoghan made a brief appearance in The Batman, which starred Robert Pattinson in the title role. Although Keoghan’s character was listed in the credits as Unseen Arkham Prisoner, he strongly resembled the Joker, which led fans to speculate that, in a spinoff, Keoghan might follow in the footsteps of Jack Nicholson and Heath Ledger, both of whom had memorably portrayed the demented villain.

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Star turns: The Banshees of Inisherin and Saltburn

Keoghan received widespread critical praise for his role in The Banshees of Inisherin (2022), written and directed by Martin McDonagh. The movie follows the estrangement of two best friends, played by Farrell and Gleeson, living on a tiny Irish island during the Irish Civil War. Keoghan portrayed the sensitive and wayward Dominic Kearney, who makes faltering attempts to connect with Farrell’s character and others on the island. Keoghan’s affecting performance earned him an Academy Award nomination for best supporting actor and a win in that category at the BAFTA Awards presentation.

Keoghan’s most prominent role to date was in Emerald Fennell’s Saltburn (2023). He starred as Oliver Quick, a seemingly innocent striver at the University of Oxford drawn to his classmate, the glamorous upper-crust Felix Catton (Jacob Elordi), who invites Quick to his family’s country estate. Although the film received mixed reviews from critics, it became a viral sensation with young audiences on TikTok, owing to several outlandish scenes, including one in which Keoghan dances nude through the empty mansion.

In 2024 Keoghan appeared as Lieut. Curtis Biddick in the miniseries Masters of the Air, about U.S. bomber pilots during World War II; a single father of two children in the drama Bird; and an Irish shepherd in the thriller Bring Them Down.

Personal life

Keoghan received tabloid attention for his yearlong relationship with American pop singer Sabrina Carpenter, which began in 2023 and coincided with the intense popularity of Saltburn. He has a son, named Brando after the legendary actor, who was born in 2022.