Barry Keoghan’s Online Abuse Is Getting Out Of Control

via Bring Them Down

Saltburn star Barry Keoghan has opened up about the way that online comments about his appearance are affecting him. Speaking to the American radio station SiriusXM, Barry said that online hate he’s been facing makes him “not want to go outside” and that despite his job as an actor he’s been “shying away” from the public eye.

The actor has a number of big roles coming up in the future, including his role as Ringo Starr in Sam Mendes’ biopic of The Beatles and being set to play the Joker alongside Robert Pattinson in the next Batman movie. He also played a huge role in the new Peaky Blinders film The Immortal Man. 

Barry explained on the radio that hateful comments about him that he’s been seeing and his reluctance to be seen by the public have also had an impact on his work, saying: “I actually don’t go to places because of these things…But when that starts leaking into your art, it becomes a problem, because then you don’t want to even be on screen anymore.”

After his split with Sabrina Carpenter in 2024 following about a year of dating, Barry faced huge amounts of backlash both online and in real life. Much of this hate was fuelled by a rumour that Barry had cheated on the pop star, although this was never confirmed by anyone. The actor recalled fans harassing his grandmother and his three year old son Brando by knocking on their door and sitting outside their house. This, combined with a new wave of hate surrounding his appearance, has tempted Barry to drop his acting career. “It is disappointing for the fans, but it’s also disappointing that my little boy has to read all this stuff when he gets older,” he said. 

While Keoghan hasn’t confirmed any decision to leave acting behind, and we’ll definitely be seeing him on our screen in the near future, it would be a real shame if Hollywood was to lose a genuine talent like him because of nasty people online. Barry Keoghan is an actor who built himself and his career from the ground up. Coming from a rough childhood in foster care, Keoghan got himself to where he is now through raw talent and hard work, and we should all be encouraging his authentic and genuine rise to fame instead of bashing him based on something he can’t control.

More importantly, it’s not his job to ‘look good’ – whatever that means to some people. He’s an actor. Of course, at his level a lot of work needs to go in on the PR side of things, and how he’s perceived in public does matter, but his baseline job is just to act and to do it well, which he has been doing. Keoghan is not the first celebrity to be subjected to awful slander online solely based on their appearance, and he likely won’t be the last. Recently, a similar thing happened with The Last of Us star Bella Ramsey. Despite giving an amazing performance throughout the show, they faced a huge amount of hate for their appearance, particularly by incel communities who claimed they weren’t attractive enough to play the original video game character. 

Although celebrities have been the target of mass scrutiny for decades, social media has made it clearer than ever that many fandoms think that celebrities owe it to them to be attractive at all times. Being seen as ‘ugly’ or anything other than conventionally attractive is almost seen as a moral failure, and it seems like no matter how talented an actor or actress is at their actual job, their real value lies only in the way they look.

That’s why real talent, the likes of Barry Keoghan, goes unappreciated and is sometimes lost completely, as fans prioritise good looks over anything else. When you look at the way these celebrities are being talked about and treated online, it’s as if the internet is trying to cancel them. Cancel culture has become so blurred and misdirected that people act like having a big nose or a few wrinkles means you’ve done something wrong and should be shamed for it. 

@celebrity.land Actor Barry Keoghan told SiriusXM’s ‘The Morning Mash Up’ that criticism about his appearance online has made him “not want to go outside” and made him “shy away.”#celebrity.land #barrykeoghan ♬ original sound – celebrity.land

There’s nothing wrong with wanting to see an actor you do find attractive on the screen, but everyone should be allowed to look normal without being afraid of getting bullied, and that applies to celebrities too. These Hollywood stars are obviously aware that being in the spotlight comes with negative sides, and they know that they are constantly under the watchful eye of the media and the public.

However, we still need to remember that behind all the press and PR training, these are real people with real feelings, and when we normalise bullying them solely because they don’t meet our standards for physical appearance (which are overinflated enough by the rise in cosmetic procedures and photo editing) we also normalise bullying regular people based on their looks as a whole. 

Whether it was intentional or not, Keoghan has started a much needed conversation about the way we treat people online and how we’ve created a culture that chooses superficial looks over hard work and talent, and he did that by being vulnerable and opening up about his own experiences with it. More of this please, and less of the public hate.