Barry Keoghan says he doesn't have a 'normal father-son relationship' with his child because of his own upbringing

Barry Keoghan is opening up about his own experiences as a parent.

The Saltburn alum stars in director Andrea Arnold's Bird (in theaters Nov. 8) about the fraught relationship between 12-year-old Bailey (Nykiya Adams) and her single father Bug (Keoghan). The actor said he drew on his own real-life experiences growing up, and as a father now, for his portrayal.

"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," Keoghan told Entertainment Weekly at the 2024 Toronto International Film Festival, "because I don't have that figure to draw experience from and to base it on. 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."

Keoghan welcomed his first child Brando in August 2022 with ex-girlfriend Alyson Sandro, and he said his own version of parenthood 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 [for Bug and Bailey], which I felt was right for it," he said. "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."

But Keoghan added that, throughout the film, there are "moments" where Bug "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?"

Keoghan revealed that Bird was shot in chronological order, and he actually only knew what was happening in his own scenes.

"We didn't get to see the movie at all," he said. "I didn't know what the movie was about. I got handed my scenes a day before, a day or two before, and only knew my journey up until a certain point, so when I seen the movie at Cannes for the first time, I didn't even know what it was about."

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When he finally saw the movie in full, he was blown away by his young costar.

"[Nykiya Adams] is absolutely incredible," he said. "Just to show up on set, your first movie, her and Jason [Buda, who plays Bailey's brother Hunter], and to bring such emotion to it in an environment like that where you got cameras, you got sound, and to still connect and get to that place, I was fascinated. I'm always fascinated watching younger actors and what they bring, especially actors who aren't trained because they've no kind of structure and it's instinct kind of way, and I'm always looking to see what they're bringing, always observing that. And I was fascinated watching the two of them."