Barry Keoghan battled flesh-eating disease before becoming the Banshees in Insheren

Barry Keoghan

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Barry Keoghan knows what it’s like to be on the verge of death, and he recounted his near-fatal battle with necrotizing fasciitis in an interview with GQ’February cover story. He recovered from the infection just days before filming for the 2022 Martin McDonagh film Inchirin Panchayat.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, necrotizing fasciitis is a flesh-eating disease caused by a rare bacterial infection, which develops after bacteria enter the body through cuts, scrapes, burns, or insect bites. Keoghan stated in his interview that one in five cases is fatal.

“But I’m not going to die, am I?” Keoghan remembers doctors asking. The medical team tells him: We don’t know. For a while, amputation was a consideration.

McDonagh visited Keoghan in hospital before filming Banshee The film was scheduled to open, and director Keoghan is remembered as a picture of calm under difficult circumstances.

“I’m not sure if he was taking a lot of medication, but he seemed to ignore it,” McDonagh said. “We only had about four days to start filming, and his arm was swollen. But he was like, ‘Yes, no, I’ll be fine – I’ll see you on Tuesday!’

According to the profile, Keoghan now boasts “scar tissue making its way up his arm like a snake tattoo” as proof of his survival. “Just remember this when you get nominated for an Oscar,” he recalls McDonagh telling him in the hospital, which is exactly what happened, in a flurry of luck that turned his way. Keoghan and co-stars Colin Farrell, Brendan Gleeson and Kerry Condon are all nominated at the 2023 ceremony.

As he explained in the interview, Keoghan is used to juggling his personal high-stakes situations with whatever film set he currently calls home. During the filming of Emerald Fennell Saltburn In 2021, his girlfriend Allison Sandro gave birth to their son, Brando.

“It was probably the best time of my life, to be completely fair,” he said. “You have a baby and you’re in a movie. It was the best time of my life.”

His timing was spot on, too,” Keoghan said Saltburn The team only gave him one day off for Brando’s birth. “They gave me the day off,” he said. “Good for them! Day off, straight into night shoots and night meals – boom!”

These days, as Keogan reaches the heights of his movie stardom, the stakes are more about balancing his time. He pulled away from Ridley Scott Gladiator 2 To film a new project with Andrea Arnold, he is in the early stages of working on a project based on his private life.

“It’s crazy when I look at it,” Keoghan said. “Looking at the (Hollywood) sign and I know I wanted that when I was a kid. I don’t know why I wanted that, but I wanted that. It brings back memories, in a weird way — it’s hard to have memories of a place you haven’t been, but I watched all those movies And I was fascinated by old Hollywood. These were the things I dreamed of when I was a kid.