Engage: Barry Keoghan says he ‘never trusted love’ after growing up in foster care

By Ellie Iorizzo, Reporter6th December 2024EngageChildrens Services, Engage, Foster Care, Looked After Children

Barry Keoghan said he has had “a lot of problems with trust” after growing up in the care system.

The Dublin-born actor has been outspoken about his childhood, which saw him and his brother sent to different foster homes as their mother struggled, and later died, from drug addiction.

Appearing on the This Life Of Mine podcast with British star James Corden, Keoghan explained how the foster care system “starts to affect you as you grow up”.

“I had a lot of problems with trust, never trusted love, never trusted that someone wanted to know me, or, let’s say, be a friend, for instance,” he said, amid reports his relationship with US pop star Sabrina Carpenter had come to an end.

“You don’t trust the process of anything.

“You have a problem with attachment and abandonment, all of these things that I’ve been working on for many years with several therapists.”

Keoghan said he always “questioned” those who got close to him.

“You’re hard-wired differently,” he said of those who grew up in the care system. “You have to really be aware and be brutally honest with yourself to work on these things, and then having a child myself, these things come into play.

“What do I show my child. Usually people have something to draw from, they have a blueprint or they have some sort of experience from their father, but I have none,” he said on US platform Sirius XM.

The 32-year-old shares a child named Brando with a former partner.

“I’m working through trust, I really am,” he told Corden, after describing himself as “quite guarded”.

Keoghan also said he began looking for “traits of being a man” in those around him, including in his co-star from The Banshees Of Inisherin, Colin Farrell.

“I’ve always got close to men figures in my life, and they became sort of father figures to me, Colin Farrell and people like that that have massive hearts and look out for you, I tend to lean towards them a lot,” he said.

In 2023, Keoghan won the Bafta best supporting actor prize for his role as Dominic Kearney in dark comedy The Banshees Of Inisherin and also received an Academy Award nod for the role.

Keoghan, who was diagnosed with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) while filming the project on Achill Island in County Mayo, said he did Farrell’s “absolute head in” while the pair lived together.

“Getting up at 3am, eating chocolate, leaving trails of Crunchy Nut everywhere, milk spilling – he actually described me as a racoon,” Keoghan added.