Riley Keough was undaunted as she pursued a career as a performer, following in her grandfather Elvis Presley’s footsteps. However, it didn’t stop her mother, Lisa Marie Presley, from trying to talk her out of it.
“I felt like I was getting into something that could go terribly wrong. [My mum] would say to me: ‘If you’re going to do this, you have to be so good at what you do, or else nobody’s going to take you seriously, you’re not going to get any jobs and it’s going to be embarrassing,’” the 35-year-old told the outlet. “You don’t want to be an embarrassing celebrity kid! She ingrained that into me and my brother so deeply.”
Although Elvis Presley died 12 years before his eldest granddaughter was born, Keough acknowledged that her famous lineage may have given her advantages.
“I’m sure being Elvis’s granddaughter has made it easier for me to get an agent, to have meetings and all this stuff, when I started out. I know there’s so much nepo-baby stuff at the moment [and] I certainly acknowledge that aspect of the privilege of coming where I come from. I’m not an idiot! I’m aware of privilege in an acute way,” she said.
According to Keough, Lisa Marie Presley—the only child of Elvis—was not fond of being in the public eye.
“Her entire identity was being Elvis’s daughter. And she happened to be someone who didn’t enjoy these things; the fame and attention on her,” Keough said.
“The most heartbreaking thing for me, growing up, was to watch this woman who I could tell so deeply wanted love and friendship, really struggle to find it. I think that’s really common at that level of fame. Being Elvis’s daughter is different to being other people’s daughters, I think. Not to say she didn’t have a few great friendships and relationships in her life—it just was always a struggle.”
Like her mother, Keough was born into fame, her first magazine cover being for People at only a month old. She then modeled as a teenager, making her debut on a Dolce & Gabbana show in 2004 before appearing in a Christian Dior show the following year.
By her 20s, Keough had pivoted to acting. She made her feature film debut starring in 2010’s “The Runaways” alongside Kristen Stewart and Dakota Fanning, followed by appearances in 2011’s “The Good Doctor” and 2015’s “Mad Max: Fury Road.”
After earning a Golden Globe nomination for her breakthrough role in the Starz series “The Girlfriend Experience,” Keough received nominations for another Golden Globe and a Primetime Emmy for “Daisy Jones and the Six,” an Amazon miniseries documenting the rise of a fictional rock band during the ‘70s.
The Memoir
Keough found herself co-writing her mother’s memoir “From Here to the Great Unknown” after Lisa Marie Presley died in 2023 while working on the book.The actress explained that she went “into this mode of needing to handle everything that’s not completed, and the book was part of that.”
“There are all these things that are left undone when a person leaves, when they pass away. How could I not finish it for her?” she said. “It felt more like a duty, I suppose. I just felt like something drove me to complete it for her.”
Despite Lisa Marie Presley’s well-documented life and openness with her daughter, Keough was still intrigued by details she learned about her late mother along the way.
“My mom was—no pun intended—a very open book!” she said, laughing. “But I think what was really the most interesting to me were the details in these stories that I knew, the broad strokes. To have all the details, how she felt in these moments, was really special. I love stories and storytelling, so I love the nuance. I think that was the coolest thing.”
