Riley Keough has a unique story when it comes to her rise to fame.
The “Daisy Jones and the Six” actress, 35, is the daughter of singer Danny Keough and the late Lisa Marie Presley, and although she was born after his death, she’s the granddaughter of Elvis Presley.
In a new interview with Elle UK, Keough explained that after her parents learned of her ambitions to be a performer, they tried to talk her out of it — although they clearly weren’t successful.
RILEY KEOUGH HELPING LISA MARIE PRESLEY’S LEGACY BE ‘TRULY UNDERSTOOD’ 1 YEAR AFTER HER DEATH
“I felt like I was getting into something that could go terribly wrong,” she recalled, remembering Lisa Marie telling her, “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.”
She added, “‘You don’t want to be an embarrassing celebrity kid!’ She ingrained that into me and my brother so deeply.”
Keough grew up with younger brother Benjamin, who passed away in 2020 from suicide. She also has two little sisters — twins Harper and Finley, whom Lisa Marie welcomed with her fourth husband, guitarist Michael Lockwood, in 2008.
Although Keough has clearly been able to avoid the trap of being “an embarrassing celebrity kid,” amassing an impressive list of credits to her name since her first acting gig in 2010’s “The Runaways,” she admitted that her famous family did offer her a leg-up against the competition.
“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,” she said. “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.”
But that advantage doesn’t mean that she hasn’t also put in the work.
Keough began working as a model at 14, making her debut in a Dolce and Gabbana show at Milan Fashion Week in 2004. Last year, she told Vanity Fair, “My whole life was pretty public, but I think this probably felt like the first time that I was, like, doing something alone, as opposed to a family thing.”
She continued modeling for the next few years, walking in fashion shows and landing on the cover of magazines like Vogue and France’s L’Officiel — her very first magazine cover being for People, a feature on “Elvis’ first grandchild” when she was a month old.
From there, she switched her focus to acting, kicking off that career path starring alongside Kristen Stewart and Dakota Fanning in “The Runaways.”
She played a stripper in Channing Tatum’s 2012 film “Magic Mike,” and she’s also worked on critically-acclaimed indie projects like 2016’s “The Girlfriend Experience.”
In addition to her acting — she’s gained over 40 credits over the past 14 years — she also owns a production company called Felix Culpa with friend Gina Gammell.
She told Vogue that she was born a hard worker — when asked by Vanity Fair where she got her work ethic, she said, “Not from my parents. Not from anyone in my family. I came out of the womb like that.”
She continued, “I think we’re half nature, half nurture. I was naturally somebody that was very punctual and hardworking and wanted to do things. My upbringing was very different to that. It was very no-schedule: Sometimes we go to school, sometimes we don’t. That was what I was used to, so I was living out my teen and childhood years as though that was what I wanted. I’m definitely an adventurous and spontaneous person, but I thrive on routine. My parents said when I was little, I was very much trying to organize things and make things happen.”
Last year, Keough starred in a limited series on Amazon called “Daisy Jones and the Six.” Her work in the musical drama about a fictional rock band was widely praised, and Reese Witherspoon, who acted as executive producer for the project, succinctly explained Keough’s unique experience.
“Despite all the money and the trappings that seem to facilitate an easier life, that is a very, very challenging life,” Witherspoon told Vanity Fair. “To be under constant scrutiny and still rise to the top and still perform at the highest level…. I’m really in awe of her in how much she challenged herself. Because she didn’t have to.”
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While Keough’s work in the entertainment industry has been, for better or for worse, affected by her family’s legacy, she shared with Elle that she believes it’s easier to be the granddaughter of Elvis than it was for her mother to have been his daughter.
“I think that, in her case, which isn’t always the case, being the daughter of someone that famous and iconic made it really hard for her to try and have a career, but also to be a person away from that at all,” she explained of Lisa Marie, who died of a bowel obstruction — a complication of an old bariatric surgery — last year.
“Her entire identity was being Elvis’s daughter,” she said. “And she happened to be someone who didn’t enjoy these things; the fame and attention on her.”
With the deaths of Lisa Marie, Elvis’ only child, and her brother Benjamin, Keough has taken on the responsibility of maintaining the legacy of the Presley family, along with her grandmother, Priscilla Presley.
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She is the sole trustee of the Graceland estate, Elvis’ former home in Memphis, Tennessee. She also worked to complete Lisa Marie’s memoir, “From Here to the Great Unknown,” which was published earlier this month.
At another point in the interview, Keough said of her mother, “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.”
