Keen to do her bit for the two young boys was his mother’s sister Lorraine Keoghan, who fought valiantly for a year to foster them, eager to provide the stability and security they so badly needed.

With the full blessing of their mother, the boys moved into a home where the family – including matriarch Patricia (90) – rallied around to surround them with love.

Barry’s cousin Gemma Keoghan (36) became more of an older sister to him, and it’s clear she adores the talented young man who has achieved so much despite those difficult early years.

Two years after going to live with his aunt, Barry suffered the tragic loss of his mother. She died not of a drugs overdose, as has been widely reported, but of a drugs-related illness in May 2003, with her family at her bedside at the Mater Hospital.

“There’s been a lot of misconceptions about that time,” Gemma said.

“My mam reared him and his brother Eric. Before we fostered him, there were multiple foster homes all right – there were 15 or 16 before we got him.

“Even at that, we were about a year trying to foster him, going for visits and being assessed and things like that.

“There was a good year when they were in a care facility, which had other siblings, as they didn’t want to separate the two brothers. So we used to go in and visit them.

“He was about eight when he came to live with us; he did his communion in our house.”

His mother Deborah “couldn’t care for them at the time” but was happy that they had gone to live with her own mother and sister.

“She spent some time in hospital and we would have been up visiting her and she was very happy that my mother did have the boys. And because my nan lives with my mammy, she knew they were coming home to her mother’s home as well,” she said.

“So it was always the place she would have wanted them in. And then obviously with them living with us, they got the stories of their mother as well. So they still had that kind of connection and contact as well.”

One can only imagine what it was like for young Barry to lose his mother at such a young age.

But if anything, it seems to have only made him more determined to follow his dreams – aided by his manifestation diary.

“He has a little diary at home with a list of directors and producers that he wanted to work with,” Gemma said. “Going to the Oscars was always his top thing. So this is his dream come true.”

As a child, he was actually quite shy and – as Colin Farrell can attest to as he lived with him while filming Banshees of Inisherin – quite messy.

“I was like his older sister, I was always bossing him a bit and going, ‘Have you tidied that room? You have the place manky’,” recalled Gemma.

“But for the most part, he was very good growing up.

“He was very quiet and had a very shy demeanour. The acting helped him come out of his shell.”

His interest in acting was sparked while attending the local Belvedere Youth Club, which ran a drama group and his first role was in Hairspray when he was 17.

Then he spotted an ad in a local shop looking for actors for a gritty crime drama Between the Canals written and directed by Mark O’Connor. He got the role, which led to a bit part in Fair City before his break as the “cat-killer” in Love/Hate.

“That was the big one, it exploded for him after that,” Gemma said. “It was shocking how much attention the cat-killer got.”

His family initially thought it might be “just a phase”, but young Barry was quietly determined that acting was his path in life and nothing could deter him – leading to some discussions at home.

“We used to have arguments like, ‘You have to go and get an education, you have to do your Leaving Cert’,” said Gemma.

“There were a lot of arguments with my mam about it. But he was like, ‘I know what I want to do.’ So just before the Leaving Cert, he went, ‘Lorraine I’m leaving (school), I know what I want to do.’

“We were like, ‘We believe in you but there’s no guarantees with this.’ Then he started getting the big roles.

“He never let anything hold him back, he always had that self-belief and he never let his circumstances disadvantage him.

“He always went, ‘I’ve gone through this but I can always have the opportunity to do this and this.’

“He always looked forward which is really good. He was like, ‘No I will make it, I will do this, this is what I want to do.’ Once he caught the acting bug, there was nothing else.”

So determined was he to pursue acting that he used to practise his accents at home – in the privacy of his bedroom.

“He wouldn’t let us see a lot of that and we’d be listening at the door and we could hear him doing the accents,” Gemma said. “He was always like, ‘I can do the acting but I need to perfect the accents’.”

He continued learning his craft but it wasn’t until 2017 with The Killing of a Sacred Deer with Colin Farrell and Nicole Kidman that he got his “big break” and caught the eye of Hollywood.

He was so convincing as a homicidal psychopath that his nanny Patricia was left seriously “rattled” after attending the premiere with him, Gemma said.

“When she came out of the cinema, he went ‘What did you think?’ and she was like ‘I don‘t like you now for a while, don’t come near me’. He was so believable in it.”

Then came roles in acclaimed movies like Dunkirk, Calm with Horses before a string of big-budget movies including The Green Knight, Eternals and The Batman.

However, it’s Martin McDonagh’s Banshees of Inisherin that has seen him take home the Bafta for Best Supporting Actor, something he hopes to repeat at the Academy Awards tomorrow night.

He paid tribute to his late mother when accepting his Bafta last month, not forgetting to give a shout-out to Dublin’s north inner city and Brando, the baby son he welcomed with girlfriend Alyson Sandro in August 2022.

What does Gemma reckon Barry’s late mother would make of his career?

“Debbie would be over the moon with Barry’s success,” she said. “She would be the proudest mother in the world, cheering him on every step of the way. I’m sure she’s looking down over him beaming with pride,” she said.

His proud family will be holding an Oscars party at their Dublin home tomorrow night and say that for Barry to even be nominated is “amazing”.

To win would be the icing on the cake for a young man who defied all the odds, thanks to his enormous talent and drive.

“It kind of makes all the kids around here go, it doesn’t matter about your circumstances or what kind of knocks you’ve had in life or what kind of cards life has dealt you,” Gemma said.

“If you want to do something and you have the determination, you can get to where you want to be.”

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