Barry Keoghan says people are using his son as ammunition against him

Oscar nominee Barry Keoghan says claims on social media about his relationship with his son are being used as ‘ammunition’ against him.

The Irish actor, 32, has one child, Brando, with a former partner and has opened up about his difficult childhood, which saw him grow up in foster care and his mother die after struggling with drug addiction.

Keoghan told Spotify’s The Louis Theroux Podcast: “If I didn’t have tough skin or the strength to have it, I wouldn’t be sitting here. Of course (my childhood) will influence my fatherhood, while I had no blueprint to draw from.

“People just read that as laziness and say, ‘Oh, that’s no excuse for being an absent father.’ I’m not an absent father.

“But it’s just, again, people like to use my son as ammunition or whatever. And it makes me stop: the more attention I’ve gotten lately and the more public I’ve been, the less I’ve posted about my child because I don’t think it’s fair to put my child online.”

He added that his son’s absence from his social media means “people are pulling a narrative and saying ‘absent father, shit, worthless father’, and more disgusting things that I wouldn’t even repeat.”

“Just the brutality of some people, man. It makes me sick, makes me furious,” he added.

“I haven’t been into it (social media) anymore because when I go through a role, I get into character. I stay away from the internet.

“But then again, when I have a little time, I am a curious creature like all of us and I want to know what (people say online), especially if it is slander and if it is bad comments that attack or attack my appearance. I as a father .”

The Saltburn actor added that he is “just trying to make a living, get a good body of work and create security for my child.”

In 2023, Keoghan won the Bafta Award for Best Supporting Actor for his role in the dark comedy The Banshees Of Inisherin and also received an Academy Award nod for the role.

He also told the podcast that his mother was “gorgeous, almost six feet tall, dark hair, just gorgeous,” but that drug addiction “caught her.”

“It’s sad to see the decline of people in the area and see how people are struggling with it and the recovery they’re in now,” he added.

“It affected my mother, it affected my uncle who died from it, and also my father.”

He says he doesn’t “blame” his mother and admitted that the experience of visiting more than a dozen foster homes “still haunts me” before living with his grandmother.

The Dublin-born actor says he wants his upbringing to be seen as inspiration for young children, and not as a ‘pity story’.

His scenes in Saltburn went viral when Keoghan danced naked around a luxury country house to Sophie Ellis-Bextor’s Murder On The Dancefloor at the end of the film.

Keoghan said being disrobed was not originally in the script, but after a conversation with director Emerald Fennell they “landed on that place”.

“My hesitation was the dancing, I don’t like dancing,” he added.

“But if it’s necessary, if it’s about the character, then this is like, if it’s not you, then you do it, and if it feels good and if it moves the script and the story forward.”

He appeared in the 2021 superhero film Eternals and the 2017 horror film The Killing Of A Sacred Deer, and also received Bafta nods for roles in Saltburn and Calm With Horses.

Keoghan’s latest film is drama Bird and he is currently filming Netflix’s movie Peaky Blinders.

The Louis Theroux Podcast is now available on Spotify.