Barry Keoghan Biography

Irish actor Barry Keoghan’s first big year was 2017, when he appeared as the innocent kid in Dunkirk and the creepy kid in The Killing of a Sacred Deer. By 2023 he was being nominated for an Oscar, for his supporting role as a sadly tragic local lad in the Martin McDonagh feature, The Banshees of Inisherin (2022).

A kid from Dublin’s Summerhill district, Keoghan was raised by relatives and foster care and got into acting without experience or formal training. He earned parts on U.K. television and small roles in movies, including ’71 (2014) and Traders (2015), before being cast as George in Christopher Nolan‘s World War II drama, Dunkirk, released in 2017.

Later that year, Keoghan appeared opposite Colin Farrell and Nicole Kidman, playing a charming and disturbing young man in Yorgos Lanthimos‘s The Killing of a Sacred Deer, and his career took off.

Keoghan’s other films include American Animals (2018), Black ’47 (2018), The Green Knight (2021, starring Dev Patel), and The Eternals (2021, directed by Chloé Zhao). He made a small but noteworthy appearance in the 2022 Robert Pattinson movie, The Batman.