ACTOR Barry Keoghan has opened about becoming a father for the first time - saying it is a love “I’ve not felt before”.
The Eternals actor welcomed his first child with his girlfriend Alyson Sandro in August.
In an interview with British GQ magazine, Barry said: “It’s indescribable. It’s a love I’ve not felt before.
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“You can learn from how you were raised. I have the chance to do the things that weren’t done for me.”
Keoghan opened up about how he met Alyson last February, after splitting from his long-time girlfriend Shona Guerin.
He met Sandro in February last year in a pub in London, and tried to charm her by telling her he was an actor.
“She didn’t care,” he said.
Sandro adds: “He was saying he plays a superhero in a film. I went, ‘Who, Spider-Man?’”
He showed her photos from the set of his superhero ventures, selfies with Angelina Jolie, to convince her he wasn’t lying.
The former Love/Hate star also opened up about the death of his mother, saying he felt that getting help coping with grief was a “sign of weakness” growing up in Ireland.
He admitted he relies heavily of Alyson to "do a lot" for him.
He said: “I’m not gonna sit here and say I’m very independent. I rely on Alyson to do a lot for me, you know, but you build this thing in you without your mother or your father…You have to figure it out yourself.”
Growing up in Ireland, getting help with your grief was “a sign of weakness”, he said.
He and his brother were offered therapy but turned it down.
“You go to the pub and you drink it down,” he says, “but that only gets you so far, honest to god, because you have to go home and sit with yourself then. It’s still with us. It’s us that ruins us.”
When he moved to London, he started therapy.
“Offloading and getting some closure on some things that may creep up on you as you get older is important,” he says. “We can’t figure all this out ourselves. We don’t have that person there to answer the questions because they’re not with us anymore.”
Keoghan also tells how he isn’t into fame, calling it a “world built on artificial things and fake promises and bullsh*t”.
“You hate the parties,” Sandro said.
“I’m not a big fan, yeah. I’m trying to find that balance of putting the phone away. I’ve seen The Rock do it. You’ve got to separate that. You’ve got work mode and family time.”
But he talks about his relationship with his famous pals, including Colin Farrell and Dwayne ‘The Rock’ Johnson.
Keoghan lived with Farrell while they were filming Martin McDonagh’s for his new film, The Banshees of Inisherin.
“Tell you what, I never thought I’d hear Colin Farrell go, ‘Did you eat my Crunchy Nut last night?’” he said laughing. “And one feckin’ shop man! I don’t know how I coped. It was beautiful and that, but I knew every feckin’ cow and donkey, it was so barren.”
“There are so many people out there who’ve given me advice. He spends downtime with Timothée “Timmy” Chalamet, and considers Dwayne Johnson – who he had looked up to when he was young – a friend.
“I reached out to him (about) a part I was having trouble trying to find. He sent me a 10-minute voice note. I could hear pages flicking. He’d written it all down.”
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