When Barry Keoghan was growing up in Dublin, he and his mates would find their way surreptitiously into the local cinema to try and watch films for free. “We used to sneak in, run upstairs, get chased. All that ‘young kid’ kind of thing.” Eventually his antics got him barred. Little did young Keoghan know, he notes now with a grin, that years later one of his films would receive a festival premiere in the very same cinema. “I was thinking, ‘What happens if I go to this premiere and I’m still barred? Would they let me in?’” He’s pleased to report that his ban has been lifted.
Once sneaking into films, now starring in them, Keoghan has enjoyed a rapid rise. In the last year and half alone, the 25-year-old has landed a pivotal role in Christopher Nolan’s Dunkirk, as the local lad who smuggles himself aboard Mark Rylance’s boat to muck in with the evacuation, and utterly stole the show – from Colin Farrell and Nicole Kidman, no less – with his chillingly composed portrayal of a sadistic middle-America teen in The Killing of a Sacred Deer. He’s rattling off career landmarks at such speed that he’s already reached the “briefly abandon film for a prestige TV series” stage of his career, by signing up for a big-budget adaptation of post-apocalyptic graphic novel Y: The Last Man.
It’s a state of affairs that Keoghan, who grew up in the inner-city Summerhill area of Dublin, is still trying to get his head around. For a sense of his bewilderment at where he’s ended up, look no further than a recent interview he did for an Irish chat show. As the host begins to introduce a clip from The Killing of a Sacred Deer, Keoghan interrupts him. “Is it the one where Nicole Kidman kisses me feet?” he asks, shaking his head in amazement.
Alas, Keoghan’s latest film features no A-listers kissing his feet, but is no less compelling. Directed by British film-maker Bart Layton, American Animals tells the real-life story of four college students who attempted to steal a cache of valuable books from the Transylvania University library in Kentucky. Initially framed as a riotous caper, the film takes a sudden queasy turn when the heist gets under way and the have-a-go criminals realise they are disastrously out of their depth.
Keoghan plays the informal leader of the group, Spencer Reinhard. A talented if directionless artist, Reinhard is convinced that a middle-class upbringing has left him without what Keoghan calls “that crisis, that experience” that will allow him to be creative. He devises the plan to rob the library – and then struggles with the implications. Keoghan has since met Reinhard and found him “easy-going but deeply regretful”. What did Reinhard make of him? “Oh, he sized me up all right!” Keoghan laughs. “I think he probably thought ‘I should have got a prettier lad’! All the lads are quite handsome looking. I think it’s the first time ever in a film that the real dudes are more handsome than the actors!”
You suspect, he is doing himself a disservice. While it would be a stretch to call Keoghan leading-man handsome, he’s usually the first person you notice on screen. His eyes seem permanently narrowed, as if he is gauging everyone around him. It’s a look used to great effect in The Killing of a Sacred Deer, where his quizzical, detached air contrasts chillingly with the chaos he wreaks.
Of course, in reality he is nothing like that. Sipping a Diet Coke at Somerset House in London, he is a cheeky, fidgety presence. At one point he apologises for his bad language while talking about the “headfuck” of auditions. When I tell him that it is fine for him to swear, he leans into the dictaphone and shouts “Fuck fuck fuck fuck!”
Speaking to the Guardian, Keoghan’s Sacred Deer co-star Farrell says that this “exuberance and sense of excitable mischief” is just one aspect of a more complex personality. “My first impression of him was that he was a pure burst of Irish energy,” Farrell says. “He seemed young – but that was a miscalculation on my part. Before too long I got to know a little more about him and rather than younger than his years, he’s older, wiser, more experienced than them. He’s stepped between the pillars of tragic loss way more often than most twice his age and he’s done so with his head unbowed.”
Keoghan’s route to mainstream recognition is a remarkable one. In the early 90s, heroin addiction was rife in Dublin. His mother died of an overdose, and Keoghan and his brother were placed in foster care. Over five years the pair were moved between 13 different homes, before eventually living with his grandmother. “Foster care was a big part of my life,” he says. “My mother dying of drugs is not easy for any kid. Anyone dying is not easy, but certainly not a mother. Me and my brother, we stuck together. The foster families were good to me and then my nanny took me in.”
Keoghan speaks about this period of his life with unfaltering matter-of-factness. It’s something that he says, “really did shape me into who I am. That’s why I say I’m happy [to talk about it], I’m proud of it. And as I’ve said before I’m very proud of my mother.” He remains close to his family, particularly his brother Eric, who was key in him pursuing acting. Crucially, he says, Eric “never took the piss out of me. Because where I’m from, to do acting is not heard of. Being one of the lads and all, you don’t just go, ‘Oh, I want to be an actor’. They’d laugh and joke about it. Not in a mean way, but like taking the piss. But once you get the seal of approval from your brother, you just know.”
Keoghan began acting after answering a casting notice in a shop window for the Irish crime drama Between the Canals. That small role led him to begin studying at local workshop The Factory. “I’d mitch off school and go to this place to watch all of these films,” he says. “I’d watch Paul Newman and all these greats and I was like ‘Who are these?’ I was learning my craft by watching these old movies. I was getting educated and I didn’t even know it.”
Growing up Keoghan wanted to be a footballer – his second cousin is the former Manchester United and Arsenal striker Frank Stapleton – or a boxer. Indeed, he still calls boxing “his dream” and was due to enter the ring for the first time at Ireland’s Celtic Box Cup last September before an injury put paid to his involvement. (Before the tournament he joked that he hoped the fight would “make his face better looking”.) Still, something about acting stuck.
“I was looking for something, he says. “I was looking to mess around, to joke. And get paid! But on a deeper level, it was very therapeutic for me. I could be someone else. I think you get to release a few of your problems there through being another person.”
His early roles cast him as a skittish delinquent: a Loyalist underling in Yann Demange’s Troubles-set thriller ’71, a slingshot-wielding traveller in Trespass Against Us, which starred Michael Fassbender, and most notoriously – for Irish viewers at least – “Wayne the cat killer” in TV mob saga Love/Hate, a part that saw him machine gun down a moggie and prompted complaints to broadcaster RTÉ.
He says he’s now wary of being stereotyped as “the weirdo”, and has begun seeking counter-intuitive roles, to “show people what I can do”. He wants to work with distinctive film-makers: Lenny Abrahamson, Paul Thomas Anderson (“If you are reading this Paul, will you pick up that phone there”, he shouts again into the dictaphone). He’s starting to take a long-term view of his acting career.
Farrell is one of those helping Keoghan as his career progresses. “I love Barry. I think all the experiences he’s had in life would bury most of us. Certainly, I believe such struggle would place me in anger and destructiveness that is counter to what I’ve seen in him. He’s about creating. Just look up his CV and see who he’s worked with already, and the depth and mystery he’s brought to each role. He’s focused, driven and grateful, all alongside the natural talent he has.” Keoghan, in turn, says that Farrell is “looking out for him”.
“He’s had his battles,” he says referring to Farrell’s past struggles with addiction, “and that’s why I really look up to him. He gave me a lot of advice. When you’re chatting with him, he’s genuine. It’s a hard thing to find in people. To sit and just be present with someone, even for two minutes. Colin has that.
“I can’t believe I’m sitting here talking about how much Colin is a good friend,” he adds, laughing. “That stuff hits you. It’s just hit me now.”
So it still hasn’t become normal to Keoghan? The glitz, the glamour, the feet-kissing? “No, I don’t think that feeling of ‘holy shit, I’m in Hollywood’ ever goes”, he says. “I’m just a kid, a kid from the block. You should title your piece that! But I am. It’s always going to be surreal to me.”
And besides, he adds, if he did ever become blase about it all, “my nanny would soon slap that out of me”.