Riley Keough Opens Up about her Bad Reaction to Authority,’ Speaking in a Quiet, Halting Voice

Acouple of months ago, Riley Keough turned 28, so she went out for a celebratory dinner with friends and family. “I drank some wine,” she shrugs. “But I don’t like drinking, really. I have so much to do and it’s hard to function with a hangover.” She thinks for a moment. “Actually, I don’t like dinners either. Such a waste of time. I like eating, but I don’t like that it’s this whole experience, like picking a restaurant and going there and like sitting at a table…”

She speaks in a quiet, halting voice, grinning as though amused by how her idiosyncratic opinions sound when she says them out loud, and by the bizarre fact that most people actually enjoy food. Which is ironic, considering she’s Elvis Presley’s granddaughter, but we’ll get to that.

She sits calmly on a sofa in a Hollywood photo studio, with her flame red hair and denim shorts, and an expression that says, “Isn’t life curious?”

The prosaic explanation is that Keough hasn’t got time for dinners, not with six movies coming out in 2017. “I’m a workaholic,” she explains. “Very highly strung.” She’s so busy, she’s concerned that her anonymity may be in jeopardy. Her break came in The Runaways in 2010 with Dakota Fanning, then she landed a part in Mad Max: Fury Road alongside Zoë Kravitz and Rosie Huntington-Whiteley. But it was her performance in The Girlfriend Experience, the Steven Soderbergh-produced series about an escort/law intern, that had critics applauding like seals. She’s a real and complicated anti-heroine, and the Golden Globe nomination was richly deserved.

So now, she’s everywhere. Today, we’re meant to be talking about Logan Lucky (out this month), one of five films she has coming out this year. But first, there’s this tattoo on her wrist that needs an explanation – four dots and a square beneath what looks like the Led Zeppelin symbol. “Yeah, that’s Mayan. It means I’m a Self-Existing World Bridger – which is quite a serious job.” On top of everything else? “See? That’s why no dinners.”

Logan Lucky is her third project with Soderbergh (Magic Mike was the first) and, as always, she jumped in without seeing the script: “Anyone would, it’s not a twist-my-arm-scenario.” It’s a rollicking heist movie – as is expected of Mr Ocean’s Eleven, Twelve and Thirteen – in which Keough plays Channing Tatum’s sister and accomplice in a grand Nascar rip-off. For Keough, however, the character came easy. Though she’s a Cali Valley girl and proud, she has family all over the South, in Memphis in particular.

On Graceland Avenue. I’m not meant to dwell on her family today – her publicist is right outside the (open) door, ready to pounce if I focus too much on her mother Lisa Marie and her ex-husbands Michael Jackson and Nicolas Cage – but it’s fair to say that a familiarity with the South is the very least interesting thing about her upbringing.

She grew up between the Graceland Estate and the Neverland Ranch. She’d be hanging out with Michael Jackson and his llamas one minute, and travelling to school with an armed security detail the next. Not to mention Lisa Marie’s Scientology (she’s no longer a member), or the Nicolas Cage marriage that lasted a full 108 days. And yet, by some miracle, she seems perfectly sane. I suggest gently that she’s not quite how I expected her to be, and she grins. “I think I’ve had a more complex life than people are aware of.”

As a child I told my dad, ‘I want to grow up and be poor like you.’ I didn’t know how offensive that was
For the record, she doesn’t mind being referred to as Elvis’s granddaughter. “Why should I? It’s a fact. And I’m not ashamed of that in any way.” But that said, she never knew him. Elvis had been dead 12 years by the time she was born. She just knew that he was “very, very famous. I knew the situation. I just didn’t really think about it that much.”

She grew up the eldest of four between California Valley and Hawaii, travelling back and forth. Her father, Danny, was a bass player in Lisa Marie’s band, but they divorced when Keough was six. Twenty days later, Lisa Marie married Michael Jackson, who had recently been accused of child abuse. That lasted two years, during which time Keough was the perfect age to enjoy Neverland. And after that, her life was split between Danny and Lisa Marie.

“I grew up very privileged with my mother,” she says. “But my dad didn’t live like that. And I think experiencing both sides has been helpful. My father had mattresses on the floor of his apartments. He lived in cabins and trailer parks. He just didn’t have much money.” Did she ever think, “Ugh, do I have to go back to Dad’s again?”

“Actually, my memories of growing up with him were so colourful and eccentric and fun. It was a good vibe, you know? When I was like eight I told him, ‘I want to grow up and be poor like you!’ He was eating a bowl of cereal. I didn’t realise how wildly offensive that was!”

For a while she went to a regular school in the Valley, but the constant security detail made life difficult. So home schooling made more sense, particularly with all her travelling. Besides, she never liked school. “I had like a bad reaction to authority, like mean teachers, or just a rude movie ticket person – anyone abusing their power. It really irritated me. So I was like super-shy but still kind of strong in myself. I was weird.”

An artistic career was the natural choice. Her family would have been alarmed if she had chosen to become a lawyer. But they were musicians, not actors, and music wasn’t her thing. “I played piano but I’m not particularly gifted. Movies felt endless to me, whereas music I could see myself getting bored of.”

She took to writing and directing films at home, casting her friends and bossing them about. “I was pretty hardcore. I made my friends cry because I wanted the tears to be authentic. But it was mostly horror. Once I discovered that ketchup could be blood, things went downhill from there.”

Her ambitions took a turn in her tweens, though. “I know people say like, ‘Oh I saw Alfred Hitchcock, or Citizen Kane but, for me, it was The Dangerous Lives of Altar Boys with Emile Hirsch. And Moulin Rouge. I was 12 and I was like, ‘Wow, I want to be Nicole Kidman, she made me feel so sad!’ I remember thinking how fulfilling it would be to do that, which is a big concept for a kid.”

Her attentions now turned to acting, she began talking to herself, pretending to be distraught, delighted, terrified. She made herself cry in front of the mirror. “That’s like the first sign that your child is going to be an actor. Is she crying in front of the mirror? The second one is: is she emotionally unstable?” It wasn’t attention she wanted. During a performance of Winnie the Pooh, she came on stage as Roo, took one look at the crowd and ran off in tears. “I thought you had to be super-confident to be an actor. But you don’t. You just have to be super fucked up!”