Summary
- Barry Keoghan opened up on SiriusXM’s The Morning Mash Up about relentless online abuse targeting his looks, saying it has made him withdraw from public life entirely.
- The Saltburn actor admitted the harassment has gotten so bad it’s threatening his career, saying it makes him not want to be on screen anymore.
- Keoghan also expressed worry that his three-year-old son, Brando, will one day have to read the hateful comments directed at his father.
Barry Keoghan is one of the most magnetic actors working today. He delivered a haunting, career-defining performance in Saltburn, earned an Oscar nomination, and is currently gearing up to play Ringo Starr in Sam Mendes‘ highly anticipated Beatles biopics alongside Paul Mescal, Harris Dickinson, and Joseph Quinn. By any measure, things are going incredibly well for him.
And yet, the internet has been absolutely vile to him.
The Dublin-born actor addressed the negativity he’s faced throughout his career during a candid interview Friday (March 20, 2026) on SiriusXM’s The Morning Mash Up. What he shared was genuinely difficult to hear.
“There’s a lot of hate online,” Keoghan said. “There’s a lot of abuse of how I look, and it’s kind of past the point of — you know, everyone goes through that… but it’s made me shy away. It’s made me really go inside myself, not want to attend places, not want to go outside.”
He wasn’t being dramatic about it either. “I say this being absolute pure and honest to you,” he added. “It’s becoming a problem.”
Keoghan, 33, has been on the receiving end of this kind of targeted cruelty for a while now. More than a year ago, he deleted Instagram due to relentless trolling. But stepping away from social media hasn’t been a clean fix. “I think I removed myself from online, but I’m still a curious human being that wants to go on and, if I attend an event or if I go somewhere, you want to see how it was received,” he said. “And it’s not nice.”
The harassment reportedly intensified after his split from Sabrina Carpenter. Barry and Sabrina broke up in December 2024 after about a year together — Keoghan even appeared in her “Please Please Please” music video — and once the couple called it quits, Carpenter’s fanbase quickly turned on him.
During an appearance on The Louis Theroux Podcast back in November 2024, he described how “people sit there and make videos and be like ‘I don’t like his face, he looks weird, or he looks evil’ and just pick you apart.”
Now, more than a year later, the online abuse has only worsened — and it’s started bleeding into his real life in a serious way. When asked if he has space to enjoy some privacy, Keoghan said, “I don’t have to hide away ’cause I am hiding away… I actually don’t go to places because of these things.”
That’s not just an offhand comment. That’s a working actor — one of the best of his generation — telling you that online abuse over his looks has made him a recluse.
And the stakes are getting higher. “When that starts leaking into your art, it becomes a problem,” he said, “because then you don’t want to even be on screen anymore.” For someone whose entire craft depends on presence, vulnerability, and a willingness to be seen, that’s a devastating place to land.
What makes this even harder is that Keoghan isn’t thinking only about himself. He’s also thinking about his three-year-old son, Brando, whom he shares with ex Alyson Sandro. “It is disappointing for the fans,” he said, “but it’s also disappointing that my little boy has to read all of this stuff when he gets older.”
To be clear, Keoghan hasn’t forgotten about the people who genuinely support him. “I’ve been blessed that I’ve got an incredible fan base, and people are so lovely out there,” he said. But the warmth of those supporters clearly isn’t enough to drown out the noise from the trolls.
Keoghan is currently shooting the four Beatles biopics directed by Sam Mendes, in which he’ll portray Ringo Starr. The films are set to premiere in theaters in April 2028. So he’s clearly not walking away from his career anytime soon.
Still, there’s something genuinely sobering about an actor of his caliber sitting down for an interview and being honest — painfully, nakedly honest — about the toll that online abuse is taking on his mental health, his ambitions, and his ability to simply leave the house. The internet did this. It’s worth sitting with that for a minute.
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