Barry Keoghan says he is 'haunted' by 'beautiful' mum's heroin ...

30 days ago
Barry Keoghan

Barry Keoghan has revealed that he is “haunted” by the death of his “lovely, gorgeous” mum whose addiction “caught her” when he was just 12-years-old.

The Oscar-nominated actor, who is now 32, spoke about how his mother Debbie died from a heroin overdose and how there was no relationship with his father.

Barry also spoke about being taken into care as he recalled “all the different homes” during his childhood.

“That kind of haunts me still, you don't forget those things,” he told The Louis Theroux Podcast about his mother’s death.

Speaking about being in care, Barry said: “You don't forget waiting on the social worker steps and waiting for the new family to come and play with you in the playground they have in the office and see if it's going to work and then go with them to a whole new area and a whole new home.

“And you know, the car journeys there and they're the things that haunt.”

He said he didn’t “blame” his mother, who had a “sickness”.

“She was lovely,” he revealed. “She was gorgeous, almost like six-foot, dark hair, just beautiful. Like every lad was chasing her and this thing caught her, like many families.

“It's sad to see the deterioration of people around the area and see people kind of struggle with it and the recovery they're in now. It caught my mum, it caught my uncle who died of it and caught my father as well.

“She was just unable to look after us,” he added. “My father wasn't there and so we got taken into care and no one knew about this.

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“I think she was too embarrassed to tell my granny and so no one knew that's when we went through all that. All the different homes.”

Speaking previously about his mum, Barry revealed how he prays to her “every day” following her death 19 years ago.

In May the Saltburn actor attended the Cannes Film Festival where he wore a silver bracelet with his mum’s name, Debbie, engraved on it.

He previously told Esquire how he randomly selected the bracelet when picking a costume for a movie he was working on.

He said: “I said, ‘That’s my mother’s name. Debbie.’ That’s crazy, isn’t it? That’s a sign. That is a fecking sign! That day alone is like... So I kept it. They were like, ‘Where’s the bracelet?’ I was like, ‘I’m keeping that’.”

In 2018 he spoke about losing his mother on The Late Late Show.

"It was a new thing and people didn’t know the effects,” he told then-host Ryan Tubridy.

“The drugs hit the area and it affected all the families and she was one of them that got caught.

“I was living with my Nanny at that stage. I was 12. She was very young. She was 31. I have great memories of her and I’m very proud of her”.

The actor's mum tragically passed away when he was just 12 (Photo: Instagram/Barry Keoghan)

The actor also opened up about how he and his brother Eric were moved around 13 different foster homes between the ages of five and 12 before moving in with their Nanny Patricia, aunt Lorraine, and older sister Gemma in the inner-city area of Summerhill.

“We went into foster care and the families we went to were good to us. We went to a few of them. They kept us together, which was great.

“Every family was good to us. As a kid, you don’t know what’s happening; you get attached and then boom – let's move over here.

“It’s a weird one. It’s only when you get older, you can look back and get a bit of perspective on it.

“So, I don’t have a hometown,” he joked before adding: “I’m only messing, I do. Summerhill”.

The actor went on to star in international blockbusters like The Eternals and Batman before achieving critical-acclaim for his role as Dominic Kearney in The Banshees of Inisherin.

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