Barry Keoghan admitted that he is an “addict” in a candid new interview that touched upon his troubled upbringing.
The 32-year-old Irish actor’s mother died when he was 12 due to a heroin addiction and Keoghan and his brother spent the subsequent years of their childhood in and out of foster homes around Dublin.
In an interview with Hollywood Authentic, the Saltburn actor visited one of his childhood homes. “I remember being kids here and hearing my mum scream through the letterbox, asking for us, while she’s battling addiction, while she’s looking for money to score. And we were just told to stay in bed. We weren’t to go down and hug her,” he said.
Despite his mother’s struggles, Keoghan admitted that his “curiosity” got the better of him.
“My father passed away as a result of similar and I lost my mum to it. I’ve lost two uncles and a cousin to drugs. That should be enough to go, ‘OK, if I dabble here, I’m fucked.’ But your curiosity is a powerful thing,” he said.
“Sometimes it’s beneficial, and sometimes it’s detrimental. For me, it was detrimental. Even my own son coming into this world didn’t stop me from being curious.”
Keoghan is a father to two-year-old son Brando, whom he welcomed with his ex-partner Alyson in August 2022.
However, he clarified: “I’m not in denial anymore. I understand that I do have an addiction, and I am an addict. You know, when you accept that, you finally can move on, and learn to work with it.”
Keoghan has long been outspoken about his childhood in interviews.
During an appearance on James Corden’s This Life of Mine podcast last year, the actor discussed how the foster care system “starts to affect you as you grow up.”
“I had a lot of problems with trust, never trusted love, never trusted that someone wanted to know me, or, let’s say, be a friend, for instance,” he said.
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“You don’t trust the process of anything,” Keoghan continued. “You have a problem with attachment and abandonment, all of these things that I’ve been working on for many years with several therapists.”
In 2023, Keoghan earned a Best Supporting Actor nomination at the Oscars for his role as Dominic Kearney in Martin McDonagh’s dark comedy, The Banshees of Inisherin. He went on to win the Bafta prize for the role.
