Emerald Fennell has described her Saltburn star Barry Keoghan as “a once-in-a-lifetime performer”.

In the writer/director’s latest movie, the Irish actor plays Oliver, a scholarship student at Oxford University who is invited by his rich friend Felix to spend an unforgettable summer at his family’s luxury estate Saltburn.

The Promising Young Woman filmmaker told Vanity Fair that she has had her eye on Keoghan since his performance in 2017’s The Killing of a Sacred Deer.

“I just thought, That’s a once-in-a-lifetime performer. There’s no equivalent,” she recalled.

She met with The Banshees of Inisherin actor and watched some of his earlier audition tapes and knew he was right person to play Oliver.

“He’s just so compelling. He’s got a kind of sex appeal and a vulnerability and a physical presence and a sort of darkness, or he can at least communicate these things in a way that is very rare,” she explained.

Fennell likened their collaboration to “jumping off of a cliff” due to the film’s outrageous scenes involving full-frontal nudity and graphic sexual acts.

“(It felt like we were) holding hands and jumping off a cliff, because a lot of the time we were looking to make something that is sort of visceral and surprising and dark and sexy, and that takes a lot of commitment,” she stated.

Saltburn, also starring Jacob Elordi and Rosamund Pike, will be released in cinemas from 17 November.

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