Barry Keoghan is opening up about fatherhood.
The 31-year-old actor plays a young single father to a 12-year-old daughter, played by Nykiya Adams, in the upcoming movie Bird, which recently premiered at the 2024 Toronto Film Festival.
In a new interview, Barry said that he drew on his own real-life experiences growing up, and now as a father to 2-year-old son Brando, for his role.
Keep reading to find out more…“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,” Barry told Entertainment Weekly.
“Love, you don’t need anything to draw from, love is pure, and so I’m not on about that, but I’m on about little stuff like teaching your son this or teaching your daughter that,” he added.
Barry, who welcomed Brando with ex Alyson Sandro in August 2022, went on to say that his own experience as a dad had a major impact on his performance in Bird.
“Going into this, I didn’t have that [normal experience], so it’s a very brother-sister kind of chemistry going on, which I felt was right for it,” Barry explained. “And you see that these days — there’s a lot of young fathers out there and young mothers and they’re almost like sibling-like, you know what I mean? Which is beautiful.”
Barry went on to admit that throughout the movie, there are moments where his character “has to step up as a father and make very important choices and decisions, and they may not be the best ones. But for me, the experience of playing a father was — obviously I’m a father, but at that age, she’s 12 in the movie, and it’s like, what do I base it on?”
Barry just recently shared a very rare photo with Brando, and in an interview from earlier this year, he gushed over co-parenting with Alyson.
