Page 94 - Sharp November 2024

gamut. Those places he’s been range from fantastical Camelot to cosmic starships to the Chornobyl Nuclear Power Plant. But, like his own life, they began in Ireland. In 2011, he appeared in a low-budget Irish crime film, Between the Canals, after noticing a casting call in a local shop window and lobbying the director for a part. A fleet-footed five years later, he was on a Christopher Nolan set, filming Dunkirk. Shortly after that, he was prowling after Colin Farrell in Yorgos Lanthimos’s disturbing psycho-drama, The Killing of a Sacred Deer.
Since then, he’s joined the Marvel machine with Eternals, landed his first big screen lead with Emerald Fennell’s Saltburn, and appeared in the final season of gangland thriller series, Top Boy. This fall, he stars in Bird, a small British-set drama written and directed by Big Little Lies’ Andrea Arnold — a film for which Keoghan left a leading role in Gladiator II — as Bug, an impoverished young father to two adolescent children. But these decisions — of prioritizing one particular project over another — are never about the paydays, says the actor.
“It’s not the scale of the movie, or how many trailers are on the set,” Keoghan reasons. “For me, it comes down to the filmmaker. It comes down to what role I played last. Will it challenge me? Will it elevate me? Will it help me mature as an actor, as a person? You can look at it as going to work for eight weeks, but I don’t like looking at it that way. It’s a moment in your life that you’re stepping away for. And it can drain you, and scare you, and really affect you. So, I pick my movies, and I’m very cautious selecting what I want to step into.”
This is the more apprehensive side of Keoghan: the rabbit. He may say that he’s “always up for a challenge,” and never wants to play “the obvious part,” but he’s still occasionally been caught in the creative headlights. And this may not be imposter syndrome, but the actor certainly doesn’t take on work lightly. Rather, he weighs it up, anticipates the outcomes, and defers to direction when on set. “Some people take offence to directors giving them direction,” he says. “They take it as an insult. But I love it.”
And it’s not just the directors. Keoghan takes notes from his fellow actors, too. On Bird, for example, he looked to his on-screen offspring, mostly played by newcomers, for creative inspiration. “I love watching actors who haven’t been trained,” he says, “or who are new to it all, because they don’t have that structure. They’re going off pure instinct and spontaneity. Having the two kids on set, I loved seeing the choices they were making.”
The experience reminded Keoghan of working alongside Mark Rylance on Dunkirk. “He’s such an incredible actor,” says Keoghan of the Oscar-winner, “and he’d always be watching — observing and seeing what we were bringing to it. So that’s sort of become my method, taking little bits and things from other people and seeing what works for me. Building my own rhythm.”
Keoghan grew up without a father figure but has collected several over the course of his career. Rylance is one, but he also cites Cillian Murphy, with whom he also worked on Dunkirk, and Colin Farrell as the actors who guided him onto his current professional path. At TIFF this year, Keoghan was promoting Bird. But his first trip to Toronto was with Farrell in 2017.
“Being back, with Nykiya [Adams, who plays Keoghan’s 12-year- old daughter in Bird] sort of reminded me of that time with Colin. And so, I got to kind of stand in. Not that I needed to help Nykiya — she was absolutely brilliant — but it’s such a new territory, and it can be overwhelming. All the cameras, all the red carpets, it can be intimidating for anyone. Colin never gave me any specific advice, though, it was more of just a watch and learn. You take in
how they’re moving, and just the stamina, that constant stamina.” Farrell, Murphy, Rylance. Keoghan has made mentors of them all. But the list of actors he admires runs a little longer. In 2022, the actor and his now ex-girlfriend had a son, who they named Brando (yes, after that one). The actor mentions Daniel Day-Lewis twice during our conversation. But the most rapid fire of Keoghan’s acting heroes comes as he rattles off those who have played the Joker. Keoghan took up the mantle of the warped Batman villain for Matt Reeves’ 2022 Robert Pattinson-starring reboot. Initially, he was intimidated by the challenge, but not, he says, because of the character’s ubiquity. “More so because it has been played by absolutely incredible actors. Heath Ledger being my favourite. Joaquin Phoenix. You’vegotalistthatgoesonandon—alistthatIwanttobeinthe company of. But I don’t get frightened by that. I get excited by it. I
wonder what I can bring to this that is different?”
Audiences are waiting to see if Keoghan will return as the Joker.
“I definitely already have some thoughts on it,” he says of playing the part in the 2022 installment. “On what I can bring that is different. But there is this attachment to it — this kind of thing around it. Because he’s such a dark character, and not an easy character to understand. That makes it difficult pinpointing and getting down to discovering his character and creating a backstory for him.”
Though Keoghan’s tremendous track record of playing unsettling characters makes him a natural fit for the Joker, he originally auditioned for the Riddler, a role that ultimately went to Paul Dano. It should come as no surprise, however, that Keoghan landed the bigger, more burdensome prize because the Irish actor has been turning in similarly untamed, mesmerizing performances since his animalistic breakout in 2016 melodrama Mammal. Other
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