‘Bird’ First Look: Barry Keoghan Is a Tattooed Punk in Andrea Arnold’s Latest

Samantha Bergeson
·2 min read
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Barry Keoghan is showing off his script tattoos for Andrea Arnold’s highly-anticipated “Bird.”

The “Saltburn” actor and “Banshees of Inisherin” Oscar nominee plays a character named Bug in the feature that has very little details shared as of yet. “Passages” star Franz Rogowski is cast as Bird, with Nykiya Adams, Jason Buda, Jasmine Jobson, Joanne Matthews, James Nelson-Joyce, Rhys Yates, and Sarah Beth Harber.

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While plot details remain under wraps, it is known that Keoghan exited Ridley Scott’s “Gladiator 2” to film “Bird” instead. The feature will be premiering at the 2024 Cannes Film Festival in competition alongside Sean Baker’s “Anora,” David Cronenberg’s “The Shrouds,” Paul Schrader’s “Oh, Canada,” Yorgos Lanthimos’ “Kinds of Kindness,” and Francis Ford Coppola’s “Megalopolis.”

“Bird” is director Arnold’s return to narrative filmmaking since her 2016 Cannes release “American Honey” starring Shia LaBeouf and Sasha Lane.

“Bird” was picked up by Cornerstone Films. Actor Rogowski told IndieWire’s Ryan Lattanzio in December 2023 that filming “Bird” was “quite different” from his previous experiences on sets.

“With Andrea Arnold, this [past] summer, the atmosphere was quite different from what I’ve experienced so far,” Rogowski said. “She would wait for the right moment to come, like a hunter, for hours and hours to wait for a bunch of kids to calm down until they could walk across a meadow and own the meadow and be in their own territory instead of being forced to pretend to do something naturally. And that’s her message.”

Rogowski continued, “I love to work with people that have a vision, and for me, they can be assholes as long as they take care of our project and are looking for something that unites us as cinephiles. But the worst thing that can happen is to work with someone that is just very kind and not good at directing, and then you have a good time. But the movie’s going to be horrible.”

Meanwhile, Rogowski’s “Bird” co-star Keoghan wants to similarly solely work with auteurs. Keoghan told Wonderland magazine that he hopefully will collaborate with the Safdie Brothers, Lynne Ramsay, and Barry Jenkins in the future.

“I have a list of directors that tend to knock around on these interviews and by saying their names I try to use the law of attraction [to make that happen]. But I really have [now] ticked off a lot of directors on that. You know, like Christopher Nolan, Yorgos Lanthimos, and Chloé Zhao. So, I’ve got to make a feckin’ new list, man. I really do,” Keoghan said.

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