Marvel Movie Star Reveals Battle With Near-Fatal Disease

Actor Barry Keoghan faced a terrifying health crisis back in 2021. During a recent interview, the 31-year-old star, who plays Druig in the Marvel movie Eternals, revealed that he struggled with necrotizing fasciitis, a rare flesh-eating disease, prior to filming The Banshees of Inisherin in 2021.

According to a profile in GQ published on Jan. 9, Keoghan, who recently earned a Golden Globe nomination as part of the film Saltburn, nearly lost his arm to the disease, and doctors could not guarantee his survival at one point during the process. 

Although Keoghan, 31, was undergoing a serious health scare, the film’s director, Martin McDonagh, noted that while dealing with a stressful situation, he always remained calm.

“He seemed to shrug it off,” McDonagh recalled about visiting him before filming. “We were only about four days out from shooting, and his arm was puffed up. But he was like, ‘Yeah, no, I’m going to be fine—I’ll see you on Tuesday.’”

“I went to the hospital thinking, S— is he going to die? Let alone, is he going to make the movie. But I came out of there energized and looking forward to it.” According to Keoghan, McDonagh also advised him to “remember” the experience once he got “nominated for an Oscar.” 

Elsewhere in the interview, the Irish actor was asked if becoming a leading man makes it difficult to find things to dream of, to which he replied that it doesn’t. “I don’t want to get to a place of fulfillment, weirdly,” he replied. “I want to keep chasing this f— thing, whatever it is.”

He added that he wants to be motivated, respected, admired, and appreciated for his talent, as well as for pushing himself and going beyond. “Those boundaries within yourself—like, Can I do this? This role is physical, this role requires this accent,” he said. “I’d love to do a part where I’ve physically transformed.”

Keoghan admitted that he enjoys the praise and recognition but is hesitant about enjoying it excessively. “You can get caught up in it, and it’s kind of dangerous in that sense,” he says. This is why he makes his hotel bed every morning, even though he knows the staff will come around and change it themselves. “It’s just to start your day good, to kind of bring you back to gravity,” he said. “At least I’ve made it. It’s small, simple stuff like that, keeps you from floating away.”