Bar­ry Keoghan: ​‘Act­ing is ther­a­peu­tic, but it also mess­es with your head’

Few actors can say they’ve worked with the likes of Christo­pher Nolan and Yor­gos Lan­thi­mos before their 25^th birth­day, but Bar­ry Keoghan is one such ris­ing star. In Bart Layton’s heist dra­ma Amer­i­can Ani­mals, he plays Spencer Rein­hard, an art stu­dent who hatch­es a plan to steal some of the most valu­able books in the world from his uni­ver­si­ty library. Here Keoghan tells us about

LWLies: Have you ever stolen anything?

Keoghan: Oh yeah. I still steal. The odd Mars bar and that. You know, it’s the temp­ta­tion, isn’t it? Like, I just know I can take some­thing and not be caught. But yeah, I’ve stolen as a kid many times, Jesus, but noth­ing on the scale of this film.

In the film your char­ac­ter talks about want­i­ng to live through some kind of trau­mat­ic expe­ri­ence in order to make his art bet­ter. Do you buy into that?

I don’t think you should go and do what he did, but even as an actor, you know, I’ve been through a lot of shit. I’m not say­ing that’s good, but it’s why I think I’m doing this thing – this act­ing thing is an expres­sion and I’m releas­ing an art form. And so I think, yeah, I do buy that, for sure.

I spoke to a direc­tor a while ago who described film­mak­ing as a kind of therapy.

So ther­a­peu­tic. Ther­a­peu­tic, but it also mess­es with your head. Like, if you’re con­stant­ly going through these emo­tions and fake feel­ings, it plays with your mind a lot. You get some seri­ous weird dreams from it as well.

Were the dreams weird­er with Amer­i­can Ani­mals or with The Killing of a Sacred Deer?

Sacred Deer. They were just numb, which was weird. The bad dreams were actu­al­ly the days on set, say­ing all that crazy dia­logue. I find when you’re shoot­ing a movie [like that] you’re tap­ping into so many areas of your brain.

Did you shoot Amer­i­can Ani­mals straight after Sacred Deer?

Yeah. I did Dunkirk and Sacred Deer, then Black 47, then this. So four back to back, which was great.

Four films where your char­ac­ter has a pret­ty rough time of it.

I was on a roll. I don’t know what hap­pened to me.

Was it a relief com­ing out of Sacred Deer to play a char­ac­ter who’s pret­ty normal?

Y’know, my aim is to play a dif­fer­ent range of char­ac­ters, not stick­ing to one genre or cat­e­go­ry. To kind of get that respect from peo­ple. ​‘He can do any­thing!’ Apart from play­ing a fish. I can’t play a fish. But it’s all strate­gic, isn’t it? To play dif­fer­ent char­ac­ters. You wan­na show peo­ple what you can do.

What was the prepa­ra­tion process for Amer­i­can Animals?

Giv­en it’s a true sto­ry you’ve got lot to read on, but Bart didn’t let us hang out with the real lads, so we had to go off what was in the script. My main focus in every film is to be present, and give the feel­ing as an actor that it’s it’s the first time this is hap­pen­ing. It’s kind of same approach to every movie, this one was just a true story.

Did you end up watch­ing a lot of crime documentaries?

I watch a lot of doc­u­men­taries as it is. I love ani­mal doc­u­men­taries. Ani­mals are a big thing for me. I watched one recent­ly, The Hunt, on Net­flix. But Bart Lay­ton is a doc­u­men­tary mas­ter, isn’t he? Being in his hands, you know he’s gonna spot what the truth looks like.

How do you relate to a char­ac­ter like Spencer, who comes from quite a priv­i­leged back­ground and then just decides to do some­thing incred­i­bly stupid?

That’s the ques­tion. Why would you, you know? I mean, he’s an artist – an incred­i­ble artist actu­al­ly. But I could see from where he was that he want­ed that cri­sis in his life.

Amer­i­can Ani­mals doesn’t roman­ti­cise that cri­sis, or the idea of suf­fer­ing. And heist movies, gen­er­al­ly speak­ing, often present a roman­ti­cised ver­sion of reality. 

Yeah, they all have this fan­ta­sised ver­sion, you know, where­as Bart real­ly didn’t. He was real­ly to-the-point and just put his doc­u­men­tary twist on it. It’s a lot dif­fer­ent to a lot of heist movies I’ve seen.

Do you have any inter­est in work­ing behind the camera?

Yeah, I’ve always been inter­est­ed in the what the DoP’s doing. When I’m on a project I want to see the mood board, I wan­na see the shots. So pho­tog­ra­phy some­thing I’d love to do. I wouldn’t go near the mon­i­tor – I trust my direc­tor – but I always want to see what the cameraman’s doing. That’s from work­ing with Bart and Yor­gos – Yor­gos bought me a Nikon F2 and I start­ed tak­ing pho­tos of my girl­friend, and now she uses it too.

You’ve been brought togeth­er by Yorgos.

Weird­ly. He’s a god. But I’ve worked with all these great film­mak­ers, and they have such dif­fer­ent styles. I’m cre­at­ing my own stuff from tak­ing bits and pieces from them. You know how they say to Yor­gos, ​‘You’re kind of Kubrick-ish’? I’m hop­ing in years to come they’ll say to me, ​‘You’re kind of like Lay­ton and Lanthimos.’

Picas­so said good artists copy and great artists steal.

We all do! I’ve tak­en pieces from actors, you know, dif­fer­ent kinds of things from them.

Who are the actors you look up to?

Leonar­do DiCaprio. I know he’s everyone’s favourite, but this is before I had any clue about act­ing. The Bas­ket­ball Diaries, for me, is incred­i­ble. Paul New­man, too. Cool Hand Luke. That’s my life les­son – play it cool, always. We all like to play it cool, right? And we all have a break­ing point.

Have you had that break­ing point yet?

I’ve had a few. But you always get up. You’re always try­ing to give off the impres­sion that it’s all good. That’s why I think we’re all actors. When I go to the shop now I have a way of ask­ing for some­thing, or when I get in trou­ble, I have a way to get out of trou­ble. We’re all actors, most peo­ple don’t even know it. Even when I’m talk­ing to dif­fer­ent peo­ple – when I talk to you I’m ​‘inter­view mode’. We can switch it on and off, it’s as sim­ple as that.

Amer­i­can Ani­mals is released 7 Sep­tem­ber. Read the LWLies review.