Barry Keoghan Reveals He Technically Died
Barry Keoghan has never been an actor who keeps his walls up, but his recent appearance on the ‘Friends Keep Secrets’ podcast with Benny Blanco and Lil Dicky reached a level of raw candor that stopped audiences cold.
The Irish star opened up about a near-death experience during his battle with drug and alcohol addiction, describing the vision he had while flatlined in a London hospital and the personal reckoning that finally led him to get clean.
Keoghan revealed that the episode stemmed from a bottle injury that led to a severe infection in the weeks leading up to his role in ‘The Banshees of Inisherin’. He was struck with a bottle, the bacteria entered his bloodstream, and he contracted necrotizing fasciitis, a rare and rapidly spreading flesh-eating bacterial infection that can be fatal. He still carries a scar running up his arm from the surgery that saved his life.
During that emergency in London, Keoghan flatlined for a brief period, describing the experience as feeling “almost like a painting.” He described seeing open fields, wind, and a girl walking away who would not turn around no matter how many times he called out to her. At the same time, chaos surrounded him, which he later understood to be the physical sensation of doctors working to resuscitate him, an experience that registered in his vision as men stabbing him and trying to push him toward the other side.
He told the podcast hosts that he fought back in that vision, begging to stay, until he was finally told he could. The story is as haunting as anything he has performed on screen, and its honesty clearly resonated with the millions of people who have since engaged with the episode online.
Keoghan also spoke about the deeper personal context behind his addiction, explaining that his mother died of a heroin overdose at 32 and that his father also passed away. He went through rehab three times before something finally shifted, and the turning point came when he realized he had reached the same age as his mother when she died. That recognition became the catalyst.
He told Blanco and Lil Dicky that he has now been clean for two and a half years, describing his current state with genuine warmth. “I’m at peace now,” he said, adding that he feels present, content, and aware in a way that the years of substance use had kept from him.
The interview was recorded ahead of what is shaping up to be the busiest stretch of Keoghan’s career, with the actor set to play Ringo Starr in the upcoming Beatles biographical films and recently seen in the ‘Peaky Blinders’ theatrical film. The candor he brought to the podcast sits in striking contrast to the larger-than-life roles currently surrounding him, and it is a reminder that the most compelling thing about Barry Keoghan has always been the person underneath the performance.
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