Barry Keoghan says online “abuse” about his appearance is so bad it makes him “not want to go outside”
"It's made me shy away. It’s made me really go inside myself, not want to attend places"
by Laura Molloy · NMEBarry Keoghan says that online abuse about his appearance has made him not want to go outside.
The actor recently appeared on SiriusXM’s The Morning Mash Up, where he opened up about the “nasty side” of fame, saying: “I remove myself from online, but I’m still a human being that’s curious.”
“There’s a lot of hate online,” he added. “There’s a lot of abuse of how I look, and it’s kind of past the point of – you know, everyone goes through that… but it’s made me shy away. It’s made me really go inside myself, not want to attend places, not want to go outside.”
Keoghan wrapped up his thoughts by noting that the hateful comments would also impact those closest to him. “It is disappointing for the fans, but it’s also disappointing that my little boy has to read all of this stuff when he gets older,” the Saltburn star admitted.
It’s not the first time he’s addressed online hate. In 2024, after breaking up with Sabrina Carpenter, Keoghan took to social media to call out some of the “disgusting” behaviour he faced from her fans, after he said his name had “been dragged across the internet”.
Keoghan was on the show promoting his new film, Peaky Blinders: The Immortal Man, which is on Netflix from today.
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He also discussed another hit film of his in 2023’s Saltburn, and said the infamous scene featuring Sophie Ellis Bextor’s ‘Murder On The Dancefloor’ continued to follow him around. “They played it three times at the Vanity Fair (Oscars party)” he recalled. “I was like, ‘Okay. We get it.’ Honestly, three times. You know, I was like, ‘What are they doing?’”.
Last month, Barry Keoghan compared playing Tommy Shelby’s son in the Peaky Blinders movie to playing Simba in The Lion King. “Honestly!” he said to Empire Magazine. “The Lion King was one of the ones that, for me, had that animalistic, father and son approach to it.”
The Irish actor is also set to play Ringo Starr in four simultaneously released Beatles biopics scheduled for release in 2028. Sam Mendes will direct all four films, one for each member of the band. Keoghan is joined by Paul Mescal as Paul McCartney, Joseph Quinn as George Harrison, and Harris Dickinson as John Lennon. Recently, the first official images of the actors in character were released.
Last year, he spoke about the nerves he felt meeting Ringo Starr for the first time, while doing his research to play him, and he recently described his co-stars as “brothers”.