Oscar nominee Barry Keoghan says claims on social media about his relationship with his son are being used as “ammunition” against him.

The Irish actor, 32, has a son, Brando, with a former partner and has spoken openly about his difficult childhood, in which he grew up in foster care and his mother died after battling drug addiction.

Keoghan told Spotify’s Louis Theroux Podcast: “If I didn’t have thick skin or the strength to have it, I wouldn’t be sitting here. Of course, (my childhood) is going to affect me as a parent when I didn’t have a plan to follow.

“People just interpret that as laziness and say, ‘Oh, that’s no excuse for being an absentee father.’ I am not an absent father.

“But again, people love to use my son as ammunition or whatever. And that leads me to pause: the more attention I’ve gotten lately and the more public I’ve become, the less I’ve posted about my son, because I don’t think it’s fair to put my son online.”

He added that his son’s absence from his social media means that “people draw a narrative and say ‘absent father, shit, lazy dad,’ and more disgusting things that I wouldn’t even repeat.”

“Just the audacity of some people, man. “It makes me sick, it makes me angry,” he added.

“I have been away from social media because when I am going through a role, I get into character. I stay away from the internet.

“But again, when I have a little bit of time, I’m a curious being like all of us and you want to know what (people say online), especially when they’re slander and when they’re bad comments attacking my appearance or attacking my appearance. “I as a father.”

The Saltburn actor added that he’s “just trying to make a living, trying to get a good job and create security for my son.”

In 2023, Keoghan won the Bafta Award for Best Supporting Actor for his role in the black comedy The Banshees Of Inisherin and also received an Academy Award nomination for the role.

She also told the podcast that her mother was “beautiful, almost like six feet tall, dark hair, just beautiful,” but drug addiction “caught her up.”

“It’s sad to see the deterioration of people in the area and to see how people struggle with that and with the recovery they are in now,” he added.

“It caught my mother, it caught my uncle, who died because of it, and it caught my father too.”

He says he doesn’t “blame” his mother and admitted that the experience of going to more than 10 shelters “still haunts me” before going to live with his grandmother.

The Dublin-born actor says he wants his upbringing to be seen as an inspiration to young children and not a “sorry story”.

His scenes in Saltburn went viral when at the end of the film Keoghan is seen dancing naked in a luxury mansion to Sophie Ellis-Bextor’s Murder On The Dancefloor.

Keoghan said that being naked wasn’t originally in the script, but after a conversation with director Emerald Fennell, “they got to that place.”

“My doubt was dancing, I don’t like dancing,” he added.

“But if you have to, when it’s the character, again, this is this kind of thing where when it’s not you, you do it, and if it feels good and if it somehow advances the script and the story.”

He appeared in the 2021 superhero film Eternals and the 2017 horror The Killing Of A Sacred Deer, and also received Bafta nominations for roles in Saltburn and Calm With Horses.

Keoghan’s latest film is the drama Bird and he is currently filming the Netflix movie Peaky Blinders.

The Louis Theroux podcast is now available on Spotify.

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