It’s a miracle that he was able to fulfill his dreams. Barry Keoghan hasn’t just been a successful star since the film “Saltburn”. A goal that probably seemed absurd to him in his childhood and youth. The Irish actor experienced dark times at a young age. He was only 12 years old when his mother died of a drug overdose.
He is currently riding a wave of success, but the demons of the past have not let him go. Barry Keoghan, 31, was nominated in the Best Supporting Actor category at the Oscars last year for his performance in the film “The Banshees of Inisherin” and is currently making a name for himself for his role as Oliver Quick in the thriller “Saltburn.” In an interview with “GQ,” however, he addresses completely different topics. It’s about his absent father, the tragic death of his mother and his childhood and youth with a total of 13 foster families.
Barry Keoghan thinks about his mother all the time
Barry Keoghan is in the spotlight, but deep down the Irishman feels lonely. In the interview he is asked what he thinks about in such moments. “When I’m isolated? Obviously to my mother,” he admits. “My mother, always. She’s been dead for many years now, but I still think about her. It’s always just the successes that are in the foreground – because you want to celebrate that with her, you know?”
The triumphs – what are they worth without being able to share them with the people you love? Barry lost his mother Debbie when he was just 12 years old, as the Irish Post reported in 2019. She had apparently struggled with drug addiction for years. “She was in the hospital,” the actor recalls in the current interview. His mother was “not really in his life” before her untimely death. “She was struggling with a lot of things.” Nevertheless, he also has warm thoughts when he speaks of her. Debbie called him “Little Timmy.”
A young life in constant turmoil
Barry’s childhood was characterized by constant restlessness. He was passed from one foster family to the next. He was then allowed to move in with his brother Eric to live with his grandmother Patricia, 91. Aunt and cousin completed the family shared apartment. Lorraine, 59, his mother’s sister, adopted him when he was eight years old, according to the Daily Mail. Four years later, his mother was dead. She was only 31, the same age Barry is today. Debbie died as a result of her addiction, suffering from pneumonia and septicemia [Auftreten von Bakterien oder Pilzen bzw. ihrer Toxine im Blut; Anmerkung der Redaktion] and hepatitis.
Lorraine raised him in a two-bedroom flat in Dublin’s seedy Summerhill district and worked as a cleaner to pay the bills. Today he would like to give something back to these familiar people and would like to buy them a house.
“He was sure of himself”
His aunt still cleans in a bar. There is a photo of her famous nephew behind the counter. The regulars would call him “Hollywood.” “Nothing was handed to him on a silver platter,” insists Lorraine. “Everything he has now has been achieved through hard work and determination.” She is proud of the boy, who is now a celebrated star. She knows him inside and out. “As a teenager, I wouldn’t say he was wild, but he was sometimes hyperactive because of his ADHD [Aufmerksamkeitsdefizit-Hyperaktivitätsstörung; Anmerkung der Redaktion].” Barry wasn’t diagnosed until he was 27 and has been taking medication ever since.
Despite all the blows of fate, Keoghan was clearly focused from a young age. “He was sure of himself, a pretty conceited boy, but with a lot of character,” describes Lorraine. His cousin Gemma, 37, recalls young Barry’s soft moments. He and his brother Eric longed for a “forever home.”
A teacher at the secondary school Keoghan attended tells of the boy’s performances at the Christmas plays. Back then, he made the audience laugh with his improvisational skills. “He shone when he was on stage,” says Conor Flood.
Gemma reveals that she heard her cousin practicing his accent through his bedroom door. At the time, he is said to have listed all the directors he wanted to work with in a notebook. When he discovered acting, “there was nothing else.”
From amateur actor to cinema star
When he was 19 years old, Barry answered an ad looking for amateur actors. The Irish director Mark O’Connor noticed him and invited him to a casting for his film “Between the Canals”. Keoghan was “incredibly persistent and very curious.” “Barry was just learning the trade; he had no experience or training,” recalls O’Connor. “But that’s not what I was looking for. I was looking for truth and honesty on screen and behavior, not acting.” Barry’s luck. He was cast – and developed ambition.
Barry applied to a small acting school and landed supporting roles in Irish soaps and TV crime dramas. He got by on small salaries, but stuck with it.
Then the breakthrough came. In 2017, he starred in two major films – and Barry suddenly turned heads in the industry. Christopher Nolan’s historical war film “Dunkirk” and his role as teenager Martin in Giorgos Lanthimos’ psychological thriller “The Killing of a Sacred Deer” gave him his ticket to Hollywood.
Last year, Keoghan didn’t pick up an Oscar, but he did pick up a BAFTA Award for Best Supporting Actor in “The Banshees of Inisherin.” The big screen success “Saltburn”, which was released in cinemas in November, has now earned him another BAFTA nomination, this time in the “Best Actor” category.
Barry Keoghan has not yet completely freed himself from the demons of the past, but he is still living his dream – in the hope that his mother Debbie is quietly by his side.
Sources used: gq.com, irishpost.com, dailymail.co.uk