By this point, Barry Keoghan is most likely on your radar, since the 31-year-old Irish actor has become renowned for his attention-grabbing performance in Saltburn.

Karwai Tang / WireImage

In case you didn’t know, Barry fell into acting in his late teens when he responded to an open casting call that he saw in a shop window for the movie Between the Canals, which was released in 2010.

Two years later, he earned recognition in his home country of Ireland when he secured a breakout role in RTE’s popular series Love/Hate. Barry started to become globally recognized in 2017, when he was cast in Christopher Nolan’s Dunkirk, before going on to star in Marvel’s Eternals.

But while his true breakthrough was undeniably The Banshees of Inisherin, which was released in 2022 and led to a BAFTA win and Oscar nomination for Barry, he has reached whole new levels of fame in recent months as a direct result of Saltburn.

As you are probably aware, toward the end of last year, this movie went viral for multiple shocking scenes — all of which featured Barry.

MGM / Via youtube.com

With spoilers ahead, one of the scenes in question sees Barry’s character, Oliver,  slurp water out of the drain of a bathtub after watching Felix — played by Jacob Elordi — masturbate in it. In another, after Felix has died, Oliver undresses and has sex with his grave. 

The third scene occurs just before the film’s credits roll, with Oliver stripping completely nude before dancing around an empty mansion.

Suffice to say, Barry’s full-frontal nudity has been a hot topic of conversation since Saltburn’s release in November — and the relentless discourse looks unlikely to wind down anytime soon.

In fact, just this week, there have been multiple instances of the situation arguably going a bit too far. 

On Sunday, a BBC journalist sparked fierce backlash when he asked Barry’s friend, fellow Irish actor Andrew Scott, about the dance scene, leaving Andrew visibly uncomfortable.

This is frankly disgusting. Andrew Scott is there to support his multiple nominated film and THIS is what you ask? Then when he looks visibly uncomfortable the guy carried on. Truly horrid. #BAFTAs pic.twitter.com/42VEoBXRQi

— Alex Gilston 🔜 GFF 2024 (@PresenterAlex) February 18, 2024

BBC / Via Twitter: @PresenterAlex

And Andrew ended up walking away from the interview entirely when the journalist further pressed him on whether “prosthetics” had been used on Barry.

Then, on Tuesday, W Magazine published its feature and accompanying photo shoot with Barry and Saltburn’s director, Emerald Fennell.

Stefanie Keenan / Getty Images for Academy Museum of Motion Pictures

In the shoot, Barry leans into the bathtub scene — as well as another moment in the film where his character performs oral sex on a woman on her period and refers to himself as a "vampire" — by posing in a bath full of blood, and with blood around his mouth.

The rest of the photos see Barry posing in various latex outfits, as well as artistically highlighting his nude body through a sheer robe. 

But things really came to a head on Wednesday, when Vanity Fair dropped its 30th annual Hollywood Issue with a promotional video of the 11 featured stars.

Dave Benett / Dave Benett / Getty Images for Burberry / Via instagram.com

The clip, which was posted on the outlet’s social media accounts, sees everybody from Bradley Cooper to Natalie Portman move across the screen as though they're standing on a conveyor belt — and each of them is fully clothed.

At the end of the video, Barry enters the shot completely naked, with his bare butt facing the camera. He then places his hands in front of his crotch to preserve his modesty as he turns around with a smile on his face. 

And when the video was posted to X, formerly known as Twitter, many users expressed their concern that the Saltburn gags have officially been going on for too long as they called to “free Barry Keoghan.”

Jerritt Clark / Getty Images for W Magazine

One popular tweet read, “ive seen barry keoghan’s ass more times than i see my family.” Another added, “He got naked once had hasn’t put on his clothes ever since.”

Others felt more protective of the rising star, with somebody tweeting, “nah actually free Barry Keoghan, it's enough now.” To which another user replied, “I'd be so mad if everyone was like ‘it's funny when you take your clothes off, small man! do it again!!’ afford him some dignity..”

“barry im so sorry they keep making you act like a little freak,” one more added. While somebody else pointed out that “the way the media has reduced his performance to shock nudity is so childish.”

Barry opened up about how difficult it has been to adjust to his increased celebrity profile in his accompanying interview with Vanity Fair, where he admitted that the amount of attention he has been getting recently is “overwhelming.”

Leon Bennett / Getty Images for MBJx David Yurman

When asked about now being “on a whole new stratosphere of fame,” Barry said, “It’s new for me, man. It’s quite a scary one as well, because I’m not used to this much attention. It’s overwhelming, if I’m quite honest.

“It’s almost a different kind of life that you’ve got to be living now,” he went on. “I just want to make movies and fecking play parts and work with filmmakers, and not focus on this noise too much.”

Later in the interview, Barry also confessed that he tries not to read too much into the public’s reaction to his body when asked if he feels “objectified” by it.Interestingly, he also said that he anticipated that the nude scene would create a stir, and he wouldn’t have taken the role in Saltburn if he wasn’t prepared for the response.

“It can be detrimental to the mind and your mental state if you read into it too much or you look at too much stuff being said,” Barry began. “But I wouldn’t go there if I wasn’t prepared for that, or if I wasn’t open to receiving what people want to say.”

Jeff Kravitz / FilmMagic

Opening up some more about his decision to go nude, Barry added, “I think it shows an act of maturity in your craft, and if it justifies the story and moves it forward, why not? You look at European cinema and they tend to have a lot of scenes that involve nudity, and it’s not a massive thing, really.

“But I think it’s true art. It really is. And it’s true vulnerability as well,” he concluded. “You’re really kind of putting yourself out there in the most vulnerable state. It’s beautiful to look at. I’m not saying it’s because of my body, but it’s freeing to see that body move around in the way it does. It’s like a moving painting, almost.”

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Barry Keoghan Opened Up About The Reality Of Welcoming His First Son Right In The Middle Of Filming "Saltburn" After He Was Only Given A Single "Day Off" Leyla Mohammed · Jan. 10, 2024

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