What does Barry Keoghan have that the nepo babies never will?

Talent like Keoghan’s is rare indeed, but there are plenty of people with similar potential who never get the chance to show theirs

At least there was Barry Keoghan.

The Oscars, eh? Sometimes they just can’t help themselves. Keoghan’s nod for Best Supporting Actor for his role in The Banshees of Inisherin was a real bright spot.

I’ll discuss why below, but there was controversy aplenty, and we ought to get the bad stuff out of the way first.

So. After a couple of years in which women took the Academy Award for best director, the category is back to being an all-boys club. Women are also relative rarities in other non-gendered categories this time round. This explains why getting rid of gendered categories in the acting awards – Hugh Jackman is the most recent high-profile figure to come out in support of the idea – would be a very bad and deeply regressive thing to do.

Worst of all was the treatment of Black women (again). Viola Davis, a Bafta nominee for The Woman King, was snubbed. And if we’re talking about Black creators, where on earth was the similarly snubbed Jordan Peel’s Nope (a staple of critics’ top 10 lists)? It was the fifth most cited film of the year, according to Metacritic.

But at least there was also Keoghan, a performer who got into acting by the back door and ran up the stairs while others were taking elevators.

Acting, like the performing arts generally, is nepotism central. New York magazine set tongues wagging with its exposé “Extremely over-analysing Hollywood’s baby boom” in December. It focused on the sons and daughters of famous actors and other entertainment-industry noises who move seamlessly into starring roles. They’re still fussing about it (and moaning about it in the case of the babies). “She has her mother’s eyes, and agent,” read the subheadline.

Vice News followed it up with a go at a phenomenon “so deeply embedded in British acting that it predates the existence of Hollywood as an institution”, highlighting a string of connected (and expensively educated) Brit stars.

Keoghan, from inner-city Dublin, is the antidote. After his mother died young, having struggled with addiction, he spent years moving between foster homes – an all-too-common pattern for children who find themselves in any of the world’s dysfunctional care systems.

He couldn’t even afford the bus fare for acting classes at a Dublin school after answering an ad that scored him his first small role in a film, and he got barred from a local cinema he used to sneak into to watch movies.

Now he is on the cusp of walking off with a coveted golden statuette after a string of increasingly high-profile roles. That’s climbing those stairs at speed.

I wasn’t as much of a fan of Banshees as some. It’s a fine film, sure, but I found some of the plot developments jarring. For a night of director Martin McDonagh’s movies, I’d head to In Bruges or even The Guard before it.

But the acting is still masterful. Even if Keoghan doesn’t win – the odds put him third, and he’s not helped by the fact that he’s up against Brendan Gleeson from the same film – his sad and soulful performance was a highlight for me.

If you’ve seen his other work – he was frankly terrifying in the bleak Irish crime drama Calm With Horses – you can’t help but feel that his time will come. Which would be a good thing.

If only there were more like him.

We should remember that Hollywood’s nepo babies wouldn’t become stars like their parents if they weren’t any good. And some of them are very good indeed. The same is true of some of Britain’s privileged luvvies.

But their path is still greatly eased by having a foot planted firmly in the door when they’re starting out. Usually, that would be the door of their parents’ agents.

People like Keoghan, on the other hand, need to carry a battering ram up a mountain to open it. And they also need a winning lottery ticket. Talent like his is rare indeed. But there are plenty with similar potential who never get the chance to show it.

This isn’t unique to acting, of course. Nepotism is rife in politics, and in many of the more desirable professions, too. Journalism is full of it. Since arriving in London, I’ve met more old Etonians than I have people who, like me, know what it’s like to claim a free school meal.

It is an issue that needs addressing. Shaming those in power in an effort to make them do better is probably the best way to go about it. After all, we can’t expect any help from the nepo babies in politics.

In the meantime, we can at least cheer Keoghan on Oscars night, and on Baftas night before that. What if he and Davis both won there? That’s probably a movie fantasy, but it would be an award-worthy one.