Riley Keough’s Net Worth Quadrupled After She Inherited the Presley Family Estate
Riley Keough delivered an Emmy-nominated performance in 2023’s hit limited series Daisy Jones & The Six. Now, the 34-year-old actor could find herself in a similar position for the Hulu crime thriller Under the Bridge, which debuted on the streamer April 17.
The Hollywood Reporter lauded Keough’s “poignant chemistry” with co-star Lily Gladstone in the limited series, which gives a dramatized account of the 1997 murder of Canadian teenager Reena Virk. Keough plays Rebecca Godfrey, the journalist who wrote a best-selling 2005 book about the shocking crime, and served as an executive producer on the show.
Variety has already reported that Hulu will submit both Keough and Gladstone for Emmy consideration for Supporting Actress in a Limited Series or Movie. However, Keough isn’t looking that far ahead. “I don’t like thinking about those things because you never know, and I’m proud of work regardless of accolades,” she told Access Hollywood. “I’m so proud of the whole cast… Lily is incredible. The kids are incredible. Everybody is just so, so good.”
The Under the Bridge premiere was only the first part of a big week for Keough. The actor gives an almost unrecognizable performance as a mother Sasquatch in the surrealist comedy movie Sasquatch Sunset, in theaters on April 19.
Who Is Riley Keough?
Born into an American musical dynasty, actor Riley Keough is the daughter of Lisa Marie Presley and the granddaughter of the King of Rock ’n’ Roll, Elvis Presley. After getting her start as a teen fashion model, she made her film debut in 2010’s The Runaways. Her frequent partnership with director Steven Soderbergh led to a Golden Globes–nominated performance in the television show The Girlfriend Experience, and she has earned praise for roles in American Honey, Zola, and the 2023 series Daisy Jones & the Six, for which Keough contributed lead vocals in her Emmy-nominated role as a 1970s singer-songwriter.
Quick Facts
FULL NAME: Danielle Riley Keough
BORN: May 29, 1989
BIRTHPLACE: Santa Monica, California
PARENTS: Lisa Marie Presley and Danny Keough
SPOUSE: Ben Smith-Petersen (2015-present)
CHILDREN: Tupelo Storm
ASTROLOGICAL SIGN: Gemini
Parents and Early Life
Born on May 29, 1989, in Santa Monica, California, Danielle Riley Keough is the daughter of musicians Lisa Marie Presley and Danny Keough and the eldest grandchild of legendary performer Elvis Presley and Priscilla Presley. Keough never met the King of Rock ’n’ Roll, who died 12 years before her birth.
Keough was 5 when her parents divorced, and she and her younger brother, Benjamin, split their time between their parents, alternating between her father’s homes in Los Angeles and Hawaii and their mother’s Los Angeles home and Graceland, the Presley family home in Memphis, Tennessee. They also spent periods at Neverland Ranch, the lavish California home of singer Michael Jackson, who Lisa Marie married shortly after her divorce from Danny Keough.
Keough would later note that this upbringing, while hectic, had provided her with a balanced world view. As she told The Guardian, “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.”
Following her divorce from Jackson, Lisa Marie Presley wed twice more, including a nearly four-month marriage to actor Nicolas Cage and a fourth marriage to music producer and guitarist Michael Lockwood, with whom she had twin daughters, Keough’s half-sisters, Harper and Finley.
Showbiz Interest and Modeling Career
Born on May 29, 1989, in Santa Monica, California, Danielle Riley Keough is the daughter of musicians Lisa Marie Presley and Danny Keough and the eldest grandchild of legendary performer Elvis Presley and Priscilla Presley. Keough never met the King of Rock ’n’ Roll, who died 12 years before her birth.
Keough was 5 when her parents divorced, and she and her younger brother, Benjamin, split their time between their parents, alternating between her father’s homes in Los Angeles and Hawaii and their mother’s Los Angeles home and Graceland, the Presley family home in Memphis, Tennessee. They also spent periods at Neverland Ranch, the lavish California home of singer Michael Jackson, who Lisa Marie married shortly after her divorce from Danny Keough.
Keough would later note that this upbringing, while hectic, had provided her with a balanced world view. As she told The Guardian, “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.”
Following her divorce from Jackson, Lisa Marie Presley wed twice more, including a nearly four-month marriage to actor Nicolas Cage and a fourth marriage to music producer and guitarist Michael Lockwood, with whom she had twin daughters, Keough’s half-sisters, Harper and Finley.
Showbiz Interest and Modeling Career
Keough’s frequent travels made maintaining a regular school life difficult. She was eventually homeschooled and later dropped out of high school before graduating (a decision she later said she regretted). But she had set her sights on a performing career at a young age, writing and directing movies and plays at home that starred family and friends. Her parents, while supportive, feared the hazards of the entertainment industry, and Keough began modeling in her teens to support herself before beginning her acting career. She appeared in fashion shows for Dolce & Gabbana and Tommy Hilfiger and was named the face of Dior’s Miss Dior Chérie perfume in 2005.
Keough continues to model today. In October 2023, she became a house ambassador for Chanel and will be photographed for a 2024 spring-summer collection.
Movies and TV Shows: Mad Max, Daisy Jones, and More
Keough made her movie debut in The Runaways (2010), a musical biopic of the 1970s female rock band of the same name, where she played singer Marie Currie to Dakota Fanning’s Cherie Currie and Kristen Stewart’s Joan Jett. Additional work followed, including roles in the 2011 film The Good Doctor, then three movies in 2012: Jack & Diane, Kiss of the Damned, and Magic Mike, which marked her first project with director Steven Soderbergh. More drawn to indie films, Keough was initially uninterested in a part in George Miller’s Mad Max: Fury Road, eventually accepting a smaller role in the 2015 blockbuster starring Tom Hardy and Charlize Theron.
Keough had her first breakthrough role when she reteamed with Soderbergh for the first season of the Starz series The Girlfriend Experience in 2016. Based on an earlier Soderbergh film, the series starred Keough as a law school student intern-turned-high class call girl. She earned critical acclaim for her performance and was nominated for a Golden Globe for Best Actress in a Limited Series, Anthology Series, or Television Motion Picture. In 2017, Keough reteamed with Soderbergh a third time, for the comedy Logan Lucky.
A self-described “workaholic,” Keough kept busy after her Girlfriend breakout, earning a reputation for her skillful portrayals of middle or lower-class characters often on the margins of society, far from her roots as the scion of a musical dynasty. These included 2016’s American Honey, where she starred as a troubled runaway who joins a traveling sales crew (a role which earned Keough a Film Independent Spirit Award nod). Additional roles tackled other genres, including horror films like It Comes at Night (2017), The House That Jack Built (2018), and 2019’s The Lodge.
In a significant departure, Keough starred in Zola (2020), a movie based on A’ziah “Zola” King’s wildly popular viral series of 2015 tweets documenting the troubled meeting between two strippers. Having earned praise for her earlier naturalistic, more restrained roles, Keough went all out, sporting cornrows, spiky fingernails, an exaggerated “blaccent,” and highly sexualized performance as the troubled Stefani, who lures co-star Taylour Paige’s Zola on an ill-fated road trip to Florida in search of a big payday. As director Janicza Bravo told The New York Times, “She’s one of those actors who so effortlessly lands in the feet of her character that it almost seems like it isn’t acting.” The dark comedy earned numerous award nominations, including a Best Film nod from the Film Independent Spirit Awards.
Keough has also worked plenty behind the camera. In 2017, she formed a production company, Felix Culpa, with producer Gina Gammell. The company has several projects in development, and in 2022, the pair co-directed War Pony, a coming-of-age film which follows the lives of two Lakota Indigenous boys on a reservation. The movie premiered at the 2022 Cannes Film Festival where it won the prestigious Caméra d’Or, awarded to the best first feature.
