Barry Keoghan Dishes on Close, Flirtatious Relationship with Jacob Elordi: 'It Ain't Just for the Cameras'

The award-nominated thriller sees Keoghan's character, Oliver, in love and very much obsessed with Elordi, who plays upper crust Oxford student, Felix.

While they had to grow close for the film, the pair have maintained somewhat of a flirty friendship off-screen, as seen in their interviews and on red carpets promoting the film.

Keoghan, however, says it's not just for the cameras, telling GQ in a new cover story, "I'm really flirtin.' We were constantly close. It ain't just for the cameras and the premiere[s]. Me and Jacob -- he's like a brother to me, honestly."

"I think when you're comfortable with someone, you can be as close as you want, you know what I mean?," Keoghan explained "Its not like, 'Oh, don't come near me' -- it's like, I'm comfortable -- I'm comfortable with Jacob. Messin' about. Havin' a laugh. We're bein' lads."

"We've just done a movie where we had to kiss, man," he added. "Look at the scenes we've done. You have to be comfortable with yourself."

The film sees Keoghan push the envelope in more ways than one, delivering a final dance scene that sees the Irish-born actor go fully nude -- a moment that has since gone viral online.

"Both of us are really interested in pushing things really far," the film's director, Emerald Fennell, told the outlet. "Not in a way that's just supposed to be deliberately shocking, but because especially if you're talking about desire, if you're talking about obsession, you need to get somewhere that feels really hard to watch, because that's what it feels like. So I think for both of us, the whole time, it was about the understanding between us, and pushing each other always to do something more interesting, more surprising."

The moment and the film, which sees Keoghan's transition from boy to man, is a major marker in his career as well, with the 30-year-old actor staking his claim as one of Hollywood's next leading men.

"It's nice, man," Keoghan said. "It's nice not just being looked at as the weird-looking guy, the unique feckin' freaky little freak man-child, freak child-man, whatever you want to call it. It's nice to see people kind of look at you in that way. I'll be honest. It is nice."

"My prettiness didn't get me this far," he quipped, consciously aware that being someone audiences want to look at "opens up other lanes for me -- it's part of the leading man thing."

Moving from his "little freak" era --- "Little freak child-man era," as he calls it, Keoghan now labels himself just a man, a "Freak-Man. Man-Freak."

And he's enjoying it all, the leading man tropes and accolades that that have come with his roles in Banshees of Inisherin and now Saltburn -- but careful not to enjoy it too much.

"You can get caught up in it, and it's kind of dangerous in that sense," he explained before sharing that he makes his hotel bed every morning, despite knowing that the staff will at some point, come around and change it themselves.

"It's just to start your day good, to kind of bring you back to gravity," Keoghan said. "At least I've made it. It's small, simple stuff like that, keeps you from floating away."

"This is such a contrast to where I come from," the Oscar-nominated actor, who grew up in Dublin's inner city said later in the interview. "I mean, this is such a contrast to where anyone comes from. It's not real. This is not real, is it? It can't be real. I'm gonna wake up right now. In a second, I'll be like, 'F--k, man -- that was some dream.'"