“We should share the love and always share what each other’s work has done for us,” he says. “Because everyone has worked extremely hard to get to where we are.”

As well as helping sharing the love, it’s paid dividends for Keoghan’s career.

It’s also led to two of three Cannes visits for the Oscar nominee and BAFTA winner, speaking on a rare day away from the shoot of Sam Mendes’ epic “The Beatles – A Four-Film Cinematic Event,” biopics he refuses to say much about aside that they’re “gonna be iconic” and “part of history.” (Sadly, “romantic” as he’d love to make it sound for the benefit of our conversation, he says he’s “not dressed as Ringo”).

“I’ve also reached out to Barry Jenkins and Lynne Ramsey and Andrea Arnold,” he says. Arnold would bring Keoghan to Cannes in 2024 with her coming-of-age tale Bird (his second visit after Lanthimos’ “The Killing of a Sacred Deer”).

Opening the Directors’ Fortnight competition, “Butterfly Jam” is set among the Circassian community in Newark and stars Keoghan and Riley Keough (“one of the best,” he says) as siblings running a struggling diner alongside newcomer Talha Akdogan playing his teenage son (he describes the youngster as “incredibly talented — his rawness is unmatched”).

Keoghan is reluctant to give more details — “your curiosity and love for cinema has to make you want to see it!” — aside from it being “about the ins and out of family.”

But he acknowledges a curious link connecting all his Cannes films to date — “Sacred Deer,” “Bird” and now “Butterfly Jam.” “They’re all animals!” “

Butterfly Jam” also marks the first completed project for Keoghan’s production company — and another animal — Wolfcub (“Keoghan” means “Wolf cub” in Gaelic, he asserts).

Also in the works for the fledging banner is Netflix series, and the feature Lemonade, an Irish indie from director Kim Bartley he shot in January.

The film — set amid Ireland’s care system — has parallels with Keoghan’s own upbringing as foster kid from one of Dublin’s disadvantaged neighbourhoods. “There are moments in ‘Lemonade’ when I was like, this is too to-the-bone,” he says. “Honestly, it makes me emotional just chatting about it, but it’s beautiful.”

It wasn’t long after those days as a youngster moving between multiple homes (he would eventually live with his grandma) that Keoghan remembers saying “I want to become an actor.” But at the time it felt an impossible dream. “It was so far out of reach for me, especially where I came from,” he says.

“I just didn’t know enough about it — there were no avenues. There were college courses, stuff like that, but I’d not finished school. I was kicked out of school. So that was that.”

“Out of “love,” people would pressure him to come up with Plan B. “But I always kept in my mind that, no, I want to do this. I couldn’t pinpoint exactly what it was, but I remember just trying … even to articulate that.”

Keoghan discovered what it was aged 16 on the set of his first acting job, 2010’s gritty Irish crime thriller Between the Canals (role he got after answering a casting notice on a shop window and calling the director every few weeks).

“I remember on ‘Between the Canals,’ when the camera went up I was like, this is it. It was such a feeling that stands alone from anything else. It wasn’t like ‘I want to chase this high.’ It was just, this is where it is, this is where I belong, this is where I’m accepted.”

After his debut, Keoghan had brief stint as one of the pupils at what would become the Bow Street Academy, Dublin’s now-renowned acting institution, before being cast in his breakout role, cult Irish TV series Love/Hate.

Playing a baby-faced assassin who was gunned down at the end of the first season, he offered the magnetic screen presence that would later come to define him.

Then came Yann Demange’s acclaimed thriller ’71 as a young IRA initiate (also gunned down) and, a couple of years later, Chris Nolan’s Dunkirk as a civilian boat hand. He was off.

Keoghan’s trajectory, given bursts of rocket fuel due to his scene-stealing turn in “The Banshees of Inisherin” and a spot of nude dancing in “Saltburn,” has brought some of unfortunate trappings of fame: intense public scrutiny over his private life (which hit a peak during — and after — year-long relationship with singer Sabrina Carpenter).

In 2024, he talked to Louis Theroux about the abuse he’d received about his own son, born in 2022 with former partner, and online accusations that he was an “absent father.” “People love to use my son as ammunition,” he said.

More recently, on “The Morning Mash Up” he discussed the “hate” he’d gotten over his appearance, which had reached the point where it made him “really go inside myself, not want to attend places, not want to go outside.”

This new chapter comes with solid gravitas. Now Oscar-endorsed rising Cannes veteran mixing buzzy arthouse with red hot studio releases, Keoghan’s reached the status where he can chart his own course, whether telling stories with a deeply personal connection like “Lemonade” and doing so through his own company, or diving into studio-backed features about the most famous band in history.

“I pick projects specifically,” he says. While he says loved being a part of “Peaky Blinders” and “loved making the movie — it was incredible” he won’t reveal why he chose not to return to for the upcoming sequel series on Netflix (Jamie Bell has replaced him as Duke Shelby). But it’s clear this specificity played a part.

“I carefully, cautiously pick because I just want to enjoy, and I want to heal, I want to tell, I want to find, I want to explore. I want to discover all of those things while I’m making a movie with people who are like-minded.”

This pool of like-minded people will continue to grow as Keoghan slides into their DMs to send them notes of praise about their films (although he does admit he’s now in a place where he can get others do it for him).