It’s no surprise that Elvis Presley’s descendants are involved in show business. Lisa Marie Presley, the King of Rock’s only daughter, was a musician like her father, but daughter Riley Keough has followed in the footsteps of her grandmother, Priscilla Presley, by becoming an actress like her.
Riley Keough, born in Santa Monica (California, USA) in 1989, has built a daring and uncomplacent career in front of the cameras since she was already a model for Dolce & Gabbana and Christian Dior at the age of 15. A professional escape from the turbulent childhood and adolescence she had after her parents’ divorce when she was six years old.
Lisa Marie Presley’s daughter and Elvis’ granddaughter
That led the actress to grow up always living from one place to another, between the ramshackle caravan of her father, the musician Danny Keough, in Hawaii and her mother’s luxurious mansions in Los Angeles and Graceland, the Presleys’ sanctuary in Memphis, while Lisa Marie went in and out of failed marriages with Michael Jackson and Nicolas Cage.
Perhaps this nomadism and a life of contrasts between ultimate luxury and emotional indisposition are behind the eclecticism and affinity for risk that Riley Keough has shown in her choice of roles as an actress. In barely a decade of career, she has worked with directors such as Steven Soderbergh, George Miller, Andrea Arnold, Lars von Trier, David Robert Mitchell and Antonio Campos.
Elvis’ granddaughter is the most daring actress of her generation.
While she has never ceased to be a fashion icon, the roles that Riley Keough has chosen to play on the big screen have tended to defy the preconceived idea that being the granddaughter of the most famous music star of all time might be a preconceived idea.
Her first film role (The Runaways, 2010) was as a singer as far removed from Elvis’ musical universe as punk artist Marie Currie in the Runaways biopic directed by Floria Sigismondi with Dakota Johnson and Kristen Stewart.
After a couple of indie dramas, Keough entered Steven Soderbergh’s orbit as a cast member in Magic Mike (2012) and that led to her career taking off. Not because Soderbergh counted on her for more films (The Luck of the Logans, 2017), but because she went on to star in the first season of The Girlfriend Experience (2016), the TV series inspired by the film about sexual economics and power that the director had made a few years earlier.