Saltburn’s Barry Keoghan survived heroin-scarred childhood & living in 13 homes to become Hollywood’s wildest new star
NO one can party quite like Barry Keoghan – either on or off screen – right now.
The 31-year-old Irish actor was spotted living it up with A-listers at the Golden Globe award ceremony on Sunday night and his naked dance at the end of the hit Saltburn movie was the most talked about scene of 2023.
Barry is earning a reputation for loving and leaving beautiful women and enjoying a drink or two.
But few could begrudge the Oscar-nominated actor living his life to the full, given how hard his childhood was.
For seven years from the age of five, Barry was moved around 13 foster homes with his brother Eric, due his single mum’s struggles with drugs.
Tragically, his mum died from a heroin overdose aged 30 when the actor was just 12 and he went to live with his grandmother Patricia, a mother-of-ten.
Brought up by his gran, aunt Lorraine and older sister Gemma in the Summerhill area of the Irish capital Dublin, Barry dreamed big.
He was determined to prove that people from his background could make it in Hollywood.
Barry said: “The textbook version with that is you go down the wrong road because you’re damaged or whatever but that’s not the case.
“I had people thinking that of me. People always judge people about the area they come from.
“I used to think, ‘Wouldn’t it be amazing if I ended it in Hollywood, given everything that’s been dealt?’.
“There was a fight and the commitment to try prove people wrong.”
Breaking Hollywood
The actor has certainly done that.
Barry has starred in The Killing of the Sacred Deer alongside Nicole Kidman, the award-winning TV series Chernobyl, the superhero movie Eternals with Angelina Jolie and Christopher Nolan’s Dunkirk.
He’s been on the cover of GQ magazine, modelled Burberry and been a Dior ambassador.
Last year, he received a best supporting actor Oscar nomination for his role in the Banshees of Inisherin and won a Bafta for the part.
This year, Barry picked up a Golden Globe nomination for his incredible performance in Saltburn. He was pipped to the prize by fellow Irishman Cillian Murphy.
At the glittering awards ceremony he was photographed with Ryan Gosling and went to the after party at the notorious Chateau Marmont.
Against the odds
Barry has worked hard to get his name in lights after a tough start.
Growing up in foster homes, as his mum struggled with addiction, left him feeling rootless.
“Every family was good to us. As a kid, you don’t know what’s happening. You get attached… and then boom. Let’s move over here,” he told the Late, Late Show. “I don’t have a hometown, that’s what I’m saying.”
He lost his mum, Debbie, when she got caught up in Dublin’s drug scene.
He said: “Heroin came into Dublin, and it caught every family. My mother was one of the unlucky ones. She got caught on it, then she passed away.”
He has said that the loss of his mum spurred him on to achieve great things, leaving thinking: “What more can I lose? The only way is forward.”
Heroin came into Dublin, and it caught every family.
Barry Keoghan
Around that time, aged 12, he caught the acting bug while at O’Connell School in Dublin.
He said: “In first year, I did a play, My Babysitter Is An Alien. That was the first time I ever acted and I just loved the feeling of it.”
He spotted an ad for an acting role in a shop window, aged 17, and pestered the director for a chance to prove himself.
Barry said: “I was only 17 and I didn’t really know what I was doing, but I got a feel for it and I found that I was very relaxed in front of the camera, which helps a lot.”
His performance in that Irish crime drama, Between The Canals, caught the attention of casting directors, as did his role as a cat killer in the TV series Love/Hate.
The determined youngster then joined The Factory acting school in Dublin, even though he didn’t have enough money for the bus fare.
Tangled love life
At this weekend’s Golden Globes, Barry had been expected to turn up with his rumoured girlfriend, American singer Sabrina Carpenter, but walked the red carpet alone.
He had been spotted out on a date with former Disney Channel star Sabrina, 24, in Los Angeles last month.
Their romance follows his break-up from Scottish dentist Alyson Kierans six months ago, reportedly over his party lifestyle.
The couple had a son called Brando together in August 2022 and were living together in the well-to-do seaside town of Broughty Ferry in Dundee, Scotland.
He posted a series of cute photos of his son on Instagram following Brando’s birth.
Barry, who has spoken of his affection for licensed premises, met Alyson in a London pub three years ago.
She’s made me a man. She’s the girl I want to be with for the rest of my life
Barry Keoghan
That was the same way he hooked up with Alyson’s predecessor, Shona Guerin, in a boozer in County Kerry in 2017.
Shona claimed in an Irish newspaper that Barry was with another girlfriend when he chatted her up.
The pair later went to live in Venice Beach in California together and Barry credited Shona with helping him to be a success.
He said: “She’s made me a man. She’s the girl I want to be with for the rest of my life.”
That wasn’t to be.
Fun loving
His tendency to let his hair down is what endears Barry to a lot of people.
But it was a problem last April when he was arrested in Dublin for allegedly being drunk on the balcony of an apartment.
Police sources told the press that the actor was cautioned and released without charge following a complaint about his behaviour.
A couple of years earlier he was the victim of what appears to be a terrifying assault in the Irish city of Galway.
Barry was reported to have been found with facial injuries outside a hotel and was taken to hospital for treatment.
Naked ambition
Having sparred in the boxing gym, and even considered a proper amateur bout in 2017, Barry is used to getting physical.
He has clearly worked out hard in the gym to give himself the type of action hero body that Hollywood loves.
That undoubtedly helped get him a part in the Marvel blockbuster Eternals, but paid off even more in Saltburn.
At the end of the dark comedy, which also stars Rosamund Pike, his character Oliver strips off all his clothes and dances to Sophie Ellis Bextor’s Murder on the Dancefloor.
It has earned lots of appreciation from female fans for his manhood and admiration for how far Barry is willing to go for his art.
Saltburn contains several toe-curling sexual scenes, which he fully throws himself into.
I’ll put the Oscar there, put the other one there, and the other one there
Barry Keoghan
The film, which was released in cinemas in November, topped Amazon streaming charts and has helped Bextor’s track to get back into the UK singles top ten.
There will be even more attention if Barry is among the Oscar nominations to be announced on January 23.
The actor needs to start picking up golden statuettes if he’s going to live up to a bold promise he made in 2018.
Back then he told the Late Late Show host Ryan Tubridy he’d match Daniel Day-Lewis’s three Oscars.
Looking at the desk he said: “I’ll put the Oscar there, put the other one there, and the other one there.”
With that kind of self-confidence anything could happen.