Barry Keoghan to lead movie on American outlaw Billy The Kid

Barry Keoghan
| Photo Credit: JON KOPALOFF

Irish star Barry Keoghan will essay the role of Billy the Kid, the infamous outlaw of 19th century America, in a new feature film. The movie will be directed by Bart Layton, who earlier worked with Keoghan on 2018 film American Animals, reported entertainment news outlet Deadline. The project will reportedly lean into the Kid’s Irish ancestry and complicated childhood.

Born in New York as Henry McCarty, he was orphaned at the age of 15 when his mother died and his stepfather abandoned him. His first arrest for robbery came a year later, and by the time he was 18, he was wanted for murder after an altercation in Arizona. His notoriety escalated from there, and he was 21 when Sheriff Pat Garrett shot him to death.

Keoghan, who lost his own mother when he was just 12 years old and grew up in the foster system, said he read a lot about Billy the Kid during his childhood. “As we were digging into the project, there were so many things we discovered about his life. There are so many eyewitness accounts, and lots of different versions of his story that didn’t add up but that contributed to the legend,” the 30-year-old actor told Deadline.

Keoghan, currently nominated for an Oscar for his performance in Martin McDonagh’s The Banshees of Inisherin, said he wants to step outside of the legend that was built up by the papers and tackle the pressure he must have felt from those early days. “He was running his whole life. I felt related to Billy in the sense of him being a mummy’s boy, but obviously, I took a different path, turning my circumstances into something positive rather than rebelling against them. Nevertheless, there’s a soul and a vulnerability to Billy that I think it’s important to bring, to understand him as a real person rather than the myth that he has become,” he added.

The untitled project will be produced by Element Pictures and RAW with Film4.