Barry Keoghan says the online abuse about his appearance has gotten so bad that he no longer wants to leave the house.
The 33-year-old Oscar-nominated, BAFTA-winning actor opened up during a Friday, March 20 interview on SiriusXM’s The Morning Mash Up, calling the situation a growing problem that’s now affecting both his personal life and his career. “There’s a lot of hate online,” Keoghan said. “There’s a lot of abuse of how I look, and it’s kind of past the point of like — you know, everyone goes through that. And everyone does, but it’s made me shy away. It’s made me really go inside myself, and not want to attend places, not want to go outside.”
He didn’t stop there. “I don’t have to hide away ’cause I am hiding away,” he said. “I actually don’t go to places because of these things.”
Keoghan deactivated his Instagram account in December 2024 after relentless trolling. At the time, he wrote, “I deactivated my account because I can no longer let this stuff distract from my family and my work. The messages I have received no person should ever have to read them.” He said he still checks the platform after events to see how things were received. “It’s not nice,” he said.
The criticism appeared to intensify after his split from Sabrina Carpenter in December 2024, with a wave of online trolling that followed him well beyond the breakup. In a November 2024 appearance on The Louis Theroux Podcast, he described how people were making videos picking apart his face, saying things like they dislike his features or think he looks “weird” or “evil.”
The abuse has started to bleed into his work. “When that starts leaking into your art, it becomes a problem, because then you don’t want to even be on screen anymore,” he told SiriusXM. He also brought up his three-year-old son, Brando, whom he shares with ex-girlfriend Alyson Sandro. “It is disappointing for the fans, but it’s also disappointing that my little boy has to read all of this stuff when he gets older.”
None of it has slowed down his career. Keoghan just appeared as Duke Shelby in Peaky Blinders: The Immortal Man, which premiered on Netflix on March 20. He’s currently filming Sam Mendes’ four-part Beatles cinematic event as Ringo Starr alongside Paul Mescal, Harris Dickinson, and Joseph Quinn, with all four films set to hit theaters in 2028. Up next is Kantemir Balagov’s Butterfly Jam with Riley Keough and Harry Melling.
He made a point to acknowledge the people who have shown up for him. “I’ve been blessed that I’ve got an incredible fan base, and people are so lovely out there,” he said. But as he made clear in the same breath, the noise from the other side has become impossible to tune out. And it’s starting to cost him more than just a bad day online.
This story was originally published by Parade on Mar 24, 2026, where it first appeared in the News section. Add Parade as a Preferred Source by clicking here.
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