Oscar nominee Barry Keoghan says social media claims 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 been outspoken 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, I wouldn’t be sitting here.
Of course, (my childhood is) going to affect me being a father when I had no blueprint to take from. “People just read that (as) laziness and go, ‘Oh, that’s no excuse to be an absent father’. I’m not an absent father.
“But it’s just, again, people love to use my son as ammunition or whatever. And it kind of leads me to stop, the more attention I’ve got lately and the more in the public I’ve become, 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 draw a narrative and go ‘absent father, shit, deadbeat dad’, and more disgusting things I wouldn’t even repeat”.
“Just the audacity of some people, man. It sickens me, makes me furious,” he added. “I’ve been off it (social media) because when I’m going through a role, I’m getting into character.
I stay away from the internet. “But, again, when I’ve got a bit of time, I am a curious being.