When Barry Keoghan watches a film that speaks to him, he likes to get in touch with the director to tell them. It’s something he thinks more people in the industry need to do.
“We should share the love and always share what each other’s work has done for us,” he tells Variety. “Because everyone has worked extremely hard to get to where we are.”
As well as helping sharing the love, it’s paid dividends for Keoghan’s career. And it’s led to two of three Cannes visits for the Oscar nominee and BAFTA winner, speaking on a rare day away from the shoot of Sam Mendes’ epic “The Beatles – A Four-Film Cinematic Event,” biopics he refuses to say much about aside that they’re “gonna be iconic” and “part of history.” (Sadly, “romantic” as he’d love to make it sound for the benefit of our conversation, he says he’s “not dressed as Ringo”).
Over a decade ago and then largely unknown outside of Ireland, the actor, whose delightful chutzpah saw him land a role in Matt Reeves’ “The Batman” after sending in an unsolicited self-made recording, messaged director Bart Layton to express his admiration for his 2012 doc “The Imposter.” “I remember reaching out — I think on Twitter — and being like, ‘Can I send you my audition tape,” he says. Layton would give Keoghan an early lead role as an amateur rare book thief in his follow up feature “American Animals” and, recently, as a psychotic bleach-blonde biker in “Crime 101” (the two are also working on a Billy the Kid biopic).
“I’ve also reached out to Barry Jenkins and Lynne Ramsey and Andrea Arnold,” he says. Arnold would bring Keoghan to Cannes in 2024 with her coming-of-age tale “Bird” (his second visit after Yorgos Lanthimos’ “The Killing of a Sacred Deer”).
Now Keoghan returns to Cannes for a third time with Kantemir Balagov’s “Butterfly Jam,” and all thanks to a note he sent to the Russian director after watching his 2019 breakout “Beanpole.” “He totally smashed it with that film so I reached out to say ‘incredible job,’ and we just kept in touch,” he says.
Opening the Directors’ Fortnight competition, “Butterfly Jam” is set among the Circassian community in Newark and stars Keoghan and Riley Keough (“just one of the best,” he says) as siblings running a struggling diner alongside newcomer Talha Akdogan playing his teenage son (he describes the youngster as “incredibly talented — his rawness is unmatched”).
Keoghan is reluctant to give more details — “your curiosity and love for cinema has to make you want to see it!” — aside from it being “about the ins and out of family.” But he does acknowledge a curious link connecting all his Cannes films to date — “Sacred Deer,” “Bird” and now “Butterfly Jam.” “They’re all animals!” “Butterfly Jam” also marks the first completed project out of the blocks for Keoghan’s production company — and another animal — Wolfcub (“Keoghan” means “Wolf cub” in Gaelic, he asserts, before letting out a loud howl down the phone).
Keoghan and Riley Keough in ‘Butterfly Jam’
Also in the works for the fledging (cubling?) banner is an as-yet-unannounced Netflix series, plus the feature “Lemonade,” an Irish indie from director Kim Bartley he shot in January having snatched a few days between Beatles shoots. The film — set amid Ireland’s care system — has remarkable, and coincidental, parallels with Keoghan’s own upbringing as a foster kid from one of Dublin’s most disadvantaged neighbourhoods. “There are moments in ‘Lemonade’ when I was like, this is too to-the-bone,” he says. “Honestly, it makes me emotional just chatting about it, but it’s beautiful.”
It wasn’t long after those days as a youngster moving between multiple homes (he would eventually live with his grandma) that Keoghan remembers saying “I want to become an actor.” But at the time it felt an impossible dream. “It was so far out of reach for me, especially where I came from,” he says.
As he notes, “I just didn’t know enough about it — there were no avenues. There were college courses, stuff like that, but I’d not finished school. I was kicked out of school. So that was that.”
Out of “love,” people would pressure him to come up with a Plan B. “But I always kept in my mind that, no, I want to do this. I couldn’t pinpoint exactly what it was, but I remember just trying … even to articulate that.”
Keoghan discovered exactly what it was aged 16 on the set of his first acting job, 2010’s gritty Irish crime thriller “Between the Canals” (a role he got after answering a casting notice on a shop window and calling the director every few weeks).
“I remember on ‘Between the Canals,’ when the camera went up I was like, this is it. It was such a feeling that stands alone from anything else,” he says. “It wasn’t like ‘I want to chase this high.’ It was just, this is where it is, this is where I belong, this is where I’m accepted.”
After his debut, Keoghan had a brief stint as one of the first pupils at what would become the Bow Street Academy, Dublin’s now-renowned acting institution, before being cast in his breakout role, cult Irish TV series “Love/Hate.” Playing a baby-faced assassin who was gunned down at the end of the first season, he offered hints of the magnetic screen presence that would later come to define him. Then came Yann Demange’s acclaimed thriller “’71” as a young IRA initiate (also gunned down) and, a couple of years later, Christopher Nolan’s “Dunkirk” as a civilian boat hand. He was off.
Keoghan as Ringo Starr ‘The Beatles – A Four-Film Cinematic Event’
Sony
But Keoghan’s trajectory, given bursts of rocket fuel thanks to his scene-stealing turn in “The Banshees of Inisherin” and a spot of nude dancing in “Saltburn,” has brought with it some of the unfortunate trappings of fame: intense public scrutiny over him his private life (which hit a peak during — and after — his year-long relationship with singer Sabrina Carpenter).
In 2024, he talked to Louis Theroux about the abuse he’d received about his own son, born in 2022 with a former partner, and online accusations that he was an “absent father.” “People love to use my son as ammunition,” he said. More recently, on SiriusXM’s “The Morning Mash Up” he discussed the “hate” he’d gotten over his appearance, which had reached the point where it made him “really go inside myself, not want to attend places, not want to go outside.”
But now, Keoghan tells Variety he wants to “step into a new chapter of my life where I let my work speak for me … I want to close the book on it, put my head up, have a smile and enjoy the moment.” He laughs at himself. “I feel like I just read that line off something. I didn’t, but I did look out the window as I said it and smiled.” Clearly playing a member of The Beatles can be good for you (thankfully he’s some way from wrapping — “we’re still going strong… it’s four movies at the end of the day!”).
But this new chapter comes with solid gravitas behind it. Now an Academy-endorsed rising Cannes veteran mixing buzzy arthouse with red hot studio releases, Keoghan’s reached the status where he can effectively chart his own course, whether that be telling stories with a deeply personal connection like “Lemonade” and doing so through his own company, or, diving into giant studio-backed features about the most famous band in history.
“I pick projects quite specifically,” he says. While he says he loved being a part of “Peaky Blinders” and “loved making the movie — it was incredible,” he won’t reveal why he chose not to return to for the upcoming sequel series on Netflix (Jamie Bell has replaced him as Duke Shelby). But it’s clear this specificity played a part.
“I carefully, cautiously pick because I just want to enjoy, and I want to heal, I want to tell, I want to find, I want to explore. I want to discover all of those things while I’m making a movie with people who are like-minded.”
This pool of like-minded people will continue to grow as Keoghan slides into their DMs to send them notes of praise about their films (although he does admit he’s now in a place where he can get others do it for him).
But when he says filmmakers should “share the love” because of the work put in to get to where they are, the truth of the matter is that, given where he’s come from, few have worked harder than Keoghan.
