Irish Eye on Hollywood: Barry Keoghan Stars in Christopher Nolan’s Dunkirk

With Irish stars like Kenneth Branagh and Cillian Murphy, not to mention the A-List director Christopher Nolan, it’s easy to forget that the much-hyped July war thriller Dunkirk also features the young Dublin actor Barry Keoghan – recently dubbed “Hollywood’s Next Big Thing,” by the influential magazine Hollywood Reporter. The gushing profile says: “The vulnerability Keoghan brings to the screen is brewed from a tough upbringing. Starting when he was five, he and his brother spent five years in foster care. ‘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,’ says Keoghan, who still lives in Dublin, where he and his brother were raised by his grandmother, now 85.”

After Dunkirk, Keoghan will appear alongside Colin Farrell in Killing of a Sacred Deer. ♦