Barry Keoghan was diagnosed with necrotizing fasciitis — commonly known as flesh-eating disease – just as he was set to start filming “The Banshees of Inisherin” in August 2021.”But I’m not gonna die, right?” the Irish actor asked the doctors, as he recalled in a January GQ cover story. The answer wasn’t what he wanted to hear. “Well, we don’t know,” they said. The infection, which can be brought on by different types of bacteria, kills one in five patients, according to the CDC.
Beyond death, the flesh-eating disease often results in the amputation of a limb, which was a possibility in Keoghan’s case. Luckily, the “Eternals” star didn’t lose the arm that served as the door for the bacteria to enter his bloodstream. Director Martin McDonagh visited Keoghan in the hospital before shooting was set to begin, and he didn’t like what he saw. But Keoghan didn’t make a big deal about it. “I’m not sure if he was on a lot of meds, but he seemed to shrug it off. … He was like, ‘Yeah, no, I’m going to be fine,” McDonagh said.
Keoghan made a full recovery, but only after a 10-day hospital stay. “I was in a lot of pain,” he told GQ in a 2022 story. And the pain lingered well past his discharge day. When he arrived on set to start filming, he still needed help getting in and out of clothes. “I may have been in a daze,” he said.
