As an actress and filmmaker and Elvis Presley heir, Riley Keough is no stranger to press coverage.
But no doubt she'd prefer not to be back in the news because of another Graceland legal dispute — especially one that threatens the sale of Elvis' historic mansion.
Despite her career acclaim and famous family, Keough is still perhaps not particularly well known to the general public. Here's a brief look at her life and career.
Who are Riley Keough's parents?
Danielle Riley Keough, 34, is the daughter of Lisa Marie Presley (the only child of Elvis Presley) and musician Danny Keough (the first of Lisa Marie's four husbands — next up was Michael Jackson, followed by Nicolas Cage, followed by producer/musician Michael Lockwood). Her brother, Benjamin Storm Keough (Lisa Marie's other child with Danny Keough), died at 27 in 2020 from a self-inflicted gunshot wound. Keough's parents divorced when she was 5 — close to the same age as her mother when Elvis and Priscilla Presley separated.
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What is Riley Keough famous for?
Relatively tall at 5-foot-7 (unlike her 5-foot-3 mother), Riley Keough began modeling at 15. At 20, she made her film debut in "The Runaways," about the pioneering "all-girl" rock band that included the young Joan Jett (played by Kristen Stewart). Her subsequent movie career found her working mostly with critically respected directors in independent productions, including Andrea Arnold's "American Honey," Steven Soderbergh's "Magic Mike," Lars von Trier's "The House That Jack Built" and the recent "Sasquatch Sunset," in which she plays a female Bigfoot. The most high-profile movie of her career to date is George Miller's apocalyptic action epic "Mad Max: Fury Road," in which Keough was one of the on-the-run wives of a skull-masked wasteland warlord named Immortan Joe. (Keough does not appear in the prequel, "Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga," which opens this week.)
She starred in the first season of Soderbergh's Starz network series "The Girlfriend Experience" and earned an "Outstanding Lead Actress" Grammy nomination last year for her work in another rock band-themed story, the Amazon Prime miniseries "Daisy Jones and the Six." She also co-wrote and co-directed, with Gina Gammell, the movie "War Pony," which debuted at the 2022 Cannes Film Festival. The drama is about two Indigenous youths on an Indian reservation in South Dakota.
Who is Riley Keough's husband?
Keough is married to Ben Smith-Petersen, an Australian stuntman she met on the set of "Mad Max: Fury Road." The couple's daughter, Tupelo Storm Smith-Petersen, was born in 2022. "Storm" also is the middle name of Riley Keough's late brother, while "Tupelo" references the Mississippi birth town of Keough's grandfather, Elvis Presley.
How is Riley Keough involved with Graceland?
As a child, Riley Keough didn't make many public appearances alongside Priscilla or Lisa Marie Presley at Graceland, but in recent years she began to more publicly present herself as an integral member of the Presley clan and an avatar of the Presley "brand." (For example, she joined her mother at the 2018 ribbon-cutting ceremony for an exhibit titled "Lisa Marie: Growing Up Presley" at the Elvis Presley's Memphis entertainment complex across the street from the mansion). Along with Priscilla and Lisa Marie, she actively championed the Baz Luhrmann biopic "Elvis," and in June 2022 she joined her grandmother, her mother, Luhrmann, Austin Butler, Tom Hanks and others to promote the movie with screenings and international press events at Graceland.
Since her mother's death and her inheritance of the mansion, Riley Keough understandably has shown renewed public interest in her Elvis heritage and in Graceland (where her mother and brother are interred, in the Meditation Garden, near the gravesite for Elvis Presley and other family members). On Nov. 29, she hosted a live NBC special, "Christmas at Graceland," that showcased such artists as Lana Del Rey, Alanis Morissette, John Legend and Post Malone, performing Elvis songs in and around the mansion. And in January, Random House announced that Keough had readied her mother's "raw, riveting" memoir for publication in October; in addition, Keough will be the narrator for the audiobook version of the as yet untitled book.
Riley Keough, Graceland and lawsuits
Keough is now the sole owner of Graceland, which she inherited from her mother, and the lone trustee of her mother's trust, the Promenade Trust, which manages Graceland (Lisa Marie's twins will become co-managers when they reach adulthood). The responsibility carries burdens. Last June, Keough and her grandmother, Priscilla Presley, settled a months-long legal dispute over the terms of Lisa Marie's will.
The latest dispute became public Monday, May 20. According to reports, a Missouri company named Naussany Investments and Private Lending LLC claims it is owed $3.8 million on a 2018 loan taken out by Lisa Marie's Promenade Trust, which used Graceland as collateral. The company posted a foreclosure notice and said it planned a public auction of Graceland to recover the debt. Keough's representatives claim the Naussany documents that attest to the loan are fraudulent, and filed a countersuit to stop the auction.
Meanwhile, Priscilla posted a 4-second video on X (former Twitter) in which the sentence "It's a Scam!" spins like a pinwheel over footage of the front of Graceland.
