Barry Keoghan is thriving. He recently welcomed a baby, he's gracing magazine covers and he’s the breakout star of “The Banshees of Inisherin.”
At the 2023 Academy Awards, he's up for his first Oscar for his role as Dominic, a troubled youth living with an abusive father. Dominic seeks out siblings Padraic (Colin Farrell) and Siobhan (Kerry Condon) for companionship, but struggles to fill the emotional lacks of his childhood.
"The Banshees of Inisherin" is nominated for nine awards at the Oscars ceremony March 12, including best picture, best actor in a leading role for Farrell and best actor and actress in a supporting role for Keoghan, Gleeson and Condon. Let's see how they fare.
Without further ado, here are some answers to all of your questions about the 30-year-old actor.
Where is Barry Keoghan from?
While Keoghan hails from Ireland, his sense of home is more complicated than that.
The actor has been open about his childhood spent in foster care, growing up across multiple homes. His mother battled drug addiction, and it wasn't until he was 10 years old that his maternal grandmother was able to take in him and his brother, Eric. In the in between time, he lived in 13 different foster homes, he shared on Ireland's "The Late Late Show.
“Every family was good to us," he said in the interview. "As a kid, you don’t know what’s happening. You get attached … and then boom. Let’s move over here. I don’t have a hometown, that’s what I’m saying.”
Is Barry Keoghan single?
Keoghan is now 30 with a growing family of his own.
Keoghan is currently dating Alyson Sandro, a Scottish orthodontist. He told GQ magazine that they met at a pub in London in February 2021.
He described sitting near her, ready to charm by leading with actor profession.
“She didn’t care,” he recalled to the outlet.
Sandro jumped in: “He was saying he plays a superhero in a film. I went, ‘Who, Spider-Man?’”
Keoghan laughed at her response. He said her remembers showing her photos from the set of "Eternals," including selfies with Angelina Jolie, to convince her he wasn’t lying.
Does Barry Keoghan have kids?
At the time of the GQ interview, Sandro was nine months pregnant with their first child. On Aug. 8, 2022, Keoghan posted on Instagram a picture of him and Sandro with their son, Brando.
"Welcome to the pack my boy," he captioned. "Brando."
After learning of his Oscar nomination for "Banshees," he again took to Instagram, sharing a photo of himself from the moment he found out, including a picture with his son. He also wrote a note to "little Barry," which said, "Told you we would get there."
What has Barry Keoghan said about 'The Banshees of Inisherin'
In December, Keoghan explained to the Los Angeles Times how he manifested getting cast in "The Banshees of Inisherin.”
“I was like, ‘Put the picture on your phone and manifest it,’” Keoghan recalled, referring to how he set a photo of Britsh-Irish writer and director Martin McDonagh as his home screen.
“I looked at it every day," the actor said. "I remember one of my friends was like, ‘Why do you have a picture of Sting on your phone?’ I was like, ‘That’s not Sting. That’s Martin McDonagh!’”
He said Farrell later told him McDonagh had written a movie and planned to cast him.
“I didn’t take it in, obviously, but I didn’t know what was actually happening,” Keoghan said. “I was like, ‘Oh, yeah, yeah, sure.’ And then Martin emailed me. He said something like, ‘I’ve written a part for you in my new movie and I’d love to meet you and talk to you about it.’
"I said yes right away. I didn’t even read the script," he told the outlet. "He’s one of the best filmmakers out there, and he’s Irish as well. This movie is about home, so to be part of that and to be in that McDonagh squad was nice.”
What else has Barry Keoghan been in (including with Colin Farrell?
"The Banshees of Inisherin” was not the first time Keoghan and Farrell worked together.
In 2017, Farrell and Keoghan played a father and son in "The Killing Of A Sacred Deer," a horror movie about a family of four who, one by one, succumb to a mysterious illnesses, and a father's impossible choice about who to save.
In one particularly disturbing scene, Keoghan's ominous character eats massive amounts of spaghetti and explains a life-or-death decision to Nicole Kidman's character.
Keoghan told W Magazine in 2017 why he nearly broke character during that scene.
"That was a mad scene," he described. "I had to eat a lot of spaghetti. A lot. I mean, there was a ton of spaghetti going in there. I was trying to keep a straight face for that scene because I just kept laughing. It was just so weird. We did do a lot of takes, and I was just full of carbs and stuff so my stomach was bloating out like a balloon. I was like, “I can’t eat it anymore.”
Just a couple months before the release of "The Killing Of A Sacred Deer," Keoghan played a lighthearted young solider named George in "Dunkirk," a war film based on true evacuation efforts in Dunkirk, France during World War II.
Keoghan said in an interview that the writer and director, Christopher Nolan, gave him a book to read about what happened, but he never read it.
"He did mention stuff when I was cast and he gave me a book, but I have not read (the) book," he said. "I've never read a book before in my life and I wanted to keep it that way as well, especially with this, 'Dunkirk.' I wanted to not know about the event, stay naive to it, just like George, the character, and learn about it along the way. He respects every decision anyone makes."
Keoghan also was an unsettling Joker in the 2022 movie "The Batman."
Keoghan has also starred in “The Green Knight” (2021), “American Animals (2018)” and “Calm with Horses (2019)”
