Riley Keough has followed both her mother Lisa Marie and grandfather Elvis Presley into show business. But her mother warned her not to chase the limelight. It was a warning that Keough ultimately chose to ignore.
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To Keough's credit, she's forged her own path separate from both Elvis and Lisa Marie. Most likely don't even know she's Elvis's granddaughter since the last names are different.
In a new interview with Elle UK, Keough says that her parents tried to talk her out of it. Lisa Marie offered her a stark warning.
"I felt like I was getting into something that could go terribly wrong," she recalled. Lisa Marie told 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."
It's something that Keough ahs worked hard to avoid.
"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.
However, she said that she's always been a hard worker. That's something that she was born with.
Lisa Marie Struggled With Fame
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."
Keough also said that her mother Lisa Marie struggled with being Elvis's 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 said.
She also added 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."
