Barry Keoghan

In Saltburn (2023), Barry Keoghan can hold our attention simply by watching Jacob Elordi’s Felix. His Oliver Quick has the stillness of a shy boy trying to work out how to join in, and Keoghan lets the close-up do its work. We believe the wanting; Emerald Fennell’s claims to be saying something about class are less persuasive. The Oxford scenes give him something precise to play: the effort of an outsider trying to become welcome.

The international breakthrough came with Christopher Nolan’s Dunkirk and Yorgos Lanthimos’s The Killing of a Sacred Deer, both in 2017. One placed him in an ensemble; the other established how unsettling he could be. The Banshees of Inisherin (2022) allowed a gentler, more vulnerable performance before Saltburn made him a major lead.

Andrea Arnold gets more out of him in Bird (2024) by letting him be a nuisance. Bug, the young father of Nykiya Adams’s Bailey, has an electric scooter and a scheme to make money from a toad. We laughed at his foolishness, then felt uncomfortable when he turned on his daughter for spoiling his fun. Keoghan makes the humour and the cruelty fit inside a single line. Maxine Carlier’s production design helps: the squat resembles an untidied child’s bedroom and suits a father who has never grown up.

There is pleasure, too, in the wet-lipped eagerness of Ormon, his young crook in Bart Layton’s Crime 101 (2026). Keoghan gives us someone worth watching even when the heist film’s patient pacing starts to feel overextended. The recurring outsider roles could become a trap if directors start treating his face as sufficient characterisation. We would welcome more of the comic foolishness Arnold allows him, rather than another part requiring him to look quietly worrying. Start with Bird, accepting that its fairy tale is less persuasive than its actors.