Barry Keoghan Reveals How Being a Dad to Son Brando Changed Him

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Barry Keoghan has revealed how fatherhood has forever changed him.

During a campaign video for proposed children’s care reforms within the U.K., featuring U.K. Foreign Secretary David Lammy, posted via Facebook on Friday, January 17, Keoghan, 32, offered rare comments about being a dad to son Brando, 2, whom he shares with ex-girlfriend Alyson Sandro.

The Saltburn star told Lammy, 52, that becoming a father has led to deep reflection over his own parents. “As I’ve got older and I had my own son, I realized that it was such hard work for her [Keoghan’s mother] and my father. And luckily there was a good care system there, which is massively important,” Keoghan said. (Keoghan’s mother died of a heroin overdose when the actor was 12, per The Irish Post.)

“You can use your platform and profile to shine light on things, and anything to do with kids and care, I’m always wanting to help and shine a light on it, and get attention to it,” Keoghan added.

Keoghan became a father while filming 2023’s Saltburn, telling GQ in a January 2024 interview that he received a “day off” for the youngster’s birth. “Good on them! Day off, and straight on to night shoots and night feedings — boom!” Keoghan told the outlet at the time. “You see me tired. Yeah. Brando. Good ol’ Brando.”

Keoghan’s latest comments come after the star defended himself in the face of online accusations of being a “deadbeat dad.” During an interview for “The Louis Theroux Podcast” in September 2024, Keoghan acknowledged insensitive comments online trolls had recently posted.

“There’s a lot online. If I didn’t have tough skin or the strength, I wouldn’t be sitting here,” Keoghan told host Louis Theroux. “Of course, [his childhood is] going to affect me being a father when I had no blueprint to take from. People just read that [as] laziness and go, ‘Oh, that’s no excuse to be an absent father.’ I’m not an absent father.”

The accusations are believed to have been sparked by an interview Keoghan gave to Entertainment Weekly earlier that month, in which he talked about his relationship with Brando. “I’ll just say this — I didn’t have a father figure growing up, so even my relationship with my son isn’t quite of the normal father-son relationship because I don’t have that figure to draw experience from and to base it on,” Keoghan told the outlet at the 2024 Toronto International Film Festival on September 12.

During Keoghan’s conversation with Theroux, 54, he said, “People love to use my son as ammunition or whatever. And it kind of leads me to stop, the more attention I’ve [gotten] lately and the more in the public I’ve become, the less I’ve posted about my child, because I don’t think it’s fair to put my child online. And because I reigned that in, people draw a narrative and go, ‘Absent father, s—, deadbeat dad,’ and more disgusting things I wouldn’t even repeat. Just the audacity of some people, man. It sickens me, makes me furious.”

Keoghan and Sandro, a dental nurse and orthodontic therapist, met in early 2021 before calling off their relationship in summer 2023.

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