Growing up with the Presley name opens a lot of doors. Lisa Marie Presley knew that better than anyone. She also knew what can happen once you walk through them.
So when her daughter Riley said she wanted to perform, Lisa Marie had something to say first.
Riley Keough, born Danielle Riley Keough on May 29, 1989, is Lisa Marie’s oldest child. That makes her Elvis and Priscilla’s oldest grandchild, too. She started modeling at 15, walking in Dolce & Gabbana’s Autumn/Winter 2004 show.
Riley told Elle UK that her parents tried to talk her out of performing at first. She still remembers what her mom told her, and it was blunt.
“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,” Riley recalled Lisa Marie saying. Otherwise, her mom warned, “you’re not going to get any jobs and it’s going to be embarrassing.”
And then the line Riley clearly never forgot: “You don’t want to be an embarrassing celebrity kid!”
It sounds tough. But think about who was saying it. Lisa Marie had grown up as Elvis’s daughter with the whole world watching. That warning came from love, and from wanting to spare Riley the kind of attention she knew all too well.
Riley didn’t pretend the name meant nothing, either. “I’m sure being Elvis’s granddaughter has made it easier for me to get an agent,” she said in the same interview. Getting taken seriously was another matter, and that part was up to her.
She made her film debut at 20 in “The Runaways” in 2010. Here she is at the Los Angeles premiere, just getting started in the business her mom had warned her about.
Riley on the red carpet for her very first movie
From there, she kept working. Riley teamed up with Gina Gammell to co-direct a film called “War Pony.” It premiered at the Cannes Film Festival in 2022 and won the Caméra d’Or, the festival’s prize for best first feature. This video from that year’s festival is the one to watch if you want to see how far the “celebrity kid” had come.
Riley and “War Pony” at the 2022 Cannes Film Festival
Then came “Daisy Jones & the Six,” where Riley played the lead. The role earned her a Primetime Emmy nomination for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Limited or Anthology Series or Movie. At the 2023 Emmys, she talked with E! News about what she learned from her grandfather about becoming famous.
Riley at the Emmys, talking about Grandpa Elvis
Long before any of that, mother and daughter sat side by side on “The Oprah Winfrey Show” in September 2007. It was Riley’s first TV interview. She was 18 and already modeling, and she told Oprah her dream back then was to become a photographer. Lisa Marie said, “I wanted [my children] to be able to do what they wanted to do.”
That same year, she told Spinner about her oldest, “I’m very lucky in that she’s very level-headed.” And she added, “I don’t worry about her.”
Tough talk and all, it sounds like Lisa Marie knew exactly who she was raising.