Get the latest gossip

The Thing About Barry


At Toronto International Film Festival, Barry Keoghan is a meme king who’s extremely good at his actual job (acting).

After an Oscar nomination for 2022’s The Banshees of Inisherin; the hurricane of memes, snark, and discourse around last year’s Saltburn; and a publicity-friendly relationship with pop girlie du jour Sabrina Carpenter, Keoghan went from “Oh, that kid in Dunkirk?” to one of 2024’s rodent boyfriends. Playing a tatted-up dad in — even for an Arnold movie — a depressingly impoverished concrete English tenement, Keoghan’s Bug arrives onscreen shirtless, on a motor scooter, sporting a gold chain and newsboy cap, and inked with all sorts of insects, including a centipede winding up his neck and onto his face. The latter parts of director Christopher Andrews’s movie are mostly about Jack finally deciding whether he’ll carry on his parents’ enmity, and Keoghan’s ability to retreat into the skin of an unsure kid is impressive here.

Get the Android app

Or read this on VULTURE