Barry Keoghan wants to set up youth club in hometown

Barry Keoghan hopes to set up a youth club in his hometown to inspire local children to pursue their dreams.

The Banshees of Inisherin actor feels lucky that he "got out" of the Summerhill neighbourhood of Dublin, Ireland after he managed to turn his studies at a local acting school into a successful career.

He now wants to pay it forward and give young people the opportunity to go after their goals too.

"To achieve something in the area where I'm from is to finish school," he shared on The Louis Theroux Podcast. "You're lucky to get out. To say you want to be an actor back then, in an area like that, it can shut your confidence down."

Barry revealed that he has been talking to Olympic medal-winning boxer Kellie Harrington, another Summerhill success story, about running a club that offers classes in acting, boxing and other activities.

"You've got a lot of good people as well that have made it out. But there's not a big opportunity there," he explained. "I want to go back and set up some sort of a youth club and employ people from around the area and set up some classes... Me and Kellie have discussed about maybe doing boxing and acting and other stuff that kind of give kids a chance to go to this place after school and have some food and if they want to work on, you know, being a stylist or (whatever), just kind of nurture that and let them see that there's a chance for that as well."

The BAFTA-winning actor, who is also an amateur boxer, added that Summerhill is "full of gorgeous people" but "very dangerous" and worlds away from the Irish idyll depicted in his movie The Banshees of Inisherin.

Barry admitted that the drugs epidemic in the area "caught" his mother and father, who both died when he was a teenager. After spending seven years in foster homes, he and his brother Eric were raised by their grandmother.