That Elvis Presley’s offspring have a stake in the entertainment industry comes as no surprise. Riley Keough, daughter of Elvis Presley’s only daughter Lisa Marie, has chosen to follow in her grandma Priscilla’s footsteps and become an actor.

Santa Monica, California native Riley Keough (1989) has created a daring and far from comfortable career in front of the cameras ever since she was a 15-year-old model for Dolce & Gabbana or Christian Dior. A professional outlet to help her forget the tumultuous years she endured as a kid and teen after her parents divorced when she was six.

As Lisa Marie’s marriages to Michael Jackson and Nicolas Cage both ended in divorce, the actress spent her childhood moving back and forth between her mother’s lavish houses in Los Angeles and Graceland, the Presley sanctuary, and her father’s rundown trailer in Hawaii.

Perhaps Riley Keough’s passion for risk and her penchant for varied parts are the result of her nomadic upbringing and a life of contrasts between utmost luxury and emotional indisposition. After only ten years in the business, she has already collaborated with Steven Soderbergh, George Miller, Andrea Arnold, Lars von Trier, David Robert Mitchell, and Antonio Campos.

Riley Keough’s movie appearances, while she has never stopped being a fashion icon, have tended to defy the assumption that being the granddaughter of the greatest famous music performer of all time could evoke.

So, in her first film role (2010’s The Runaways, also starring Dakota Johnson and Kristen Stewart), she played a punk artist named Marie Currie, a far cry from Elvis’s musical realm.

Keough’s career finally took off after a handful of indie dramas when he was cast in Steven Soderbergh’s Magic Mike (2012). The Girlfriend Experience (2016), a television series based on Soderbergh’s film on sexual economy and power, made her a star, but not because he planned to employ her in future films (Logan’s Luck, 2017).

Her portrayal of a college student turned high-end escort in the Lodge Kerrigan and Amy Seimetz -directed series solidified Riley Keough’s reputation as a talented actor who isn’t afraid to own her sexuality in challenging roles. And in her brief appearance as one of Immortan Joe’s wives in Mad Max: Fury Road (2015), you may see a hint of that, too.

After starring in the critically acclaimed lesbian drama Love Song (2016) by So Yong Kim and, most notably, Andrea Arnold’s American Honey (2016), which won the Jury Prize at the Cannes Film Festival and earned her an Independent Spirit Awards nomination for her performance, Riley Keough became a regular presence at film festivals. After missing the 2018 festival, Keough showed up with two critically acclaimed films at the 2018 edition of Cannes: Lars von Trier’s Jack’s House and David Robert Mitchell’s Under the Silver Lake.

In recent years, the actress has starred in smaller-scale movies like the 2019 psychological horror film The Lodge, the 2020 thriller The Devil at All Hours, and the 2020 independent feature Zola, directed by Janicza Bravo and based on a viral Twitter thread from five years prior. Riley Keough’s big win in 2022 wasn’t acting, despite the fact that her role in the Prime Video series The Final List alongside Chris Pratt has increased her profile that year.

He won the Camera d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival for his directorial debut alongside Gina Gammell, War Pony, which premiered in the Un Certain Regard section. The film is a drama centered on two teenage Lakota brothers from a South Dakota reservation.