Being the daughter of a king usually means a pampered life. But things are a little
different – and even a little darker – when your dad's the King of Rock n Roll.
Lisa Marie Presley's parents had a strange marriage. Her mother, Priscilla Presley,
was just 14 years old when she fell in love with 24-year-old Elvis Presley. While still
in high school, Priscilla moved to Memphis and spent much of her time with Elvis at
Graceland. She had trouble keeping up in school, and Elvis offered her amphetamines
to keep her awake. By many accounts, Elvis was a loving husband and father,
and Priscilla enjoyed taking care of him. But the relationship was on Elvis' terms,
and she began to feel constrained by it. Priscilla once described herself as Elvis' "living doll".
He demanded she put porcelain caps on her teeth and dye her hair to match his. After the birth
of Lisa Marie, Elvis refused to have sex with her and resorted to affairs with other women.
Elvis and Priscilla Presley's divorce was amicable - finalized in 1973, when Lisa Marie was only
5 years old. Priscilla still loved Elvis, but she wanted her independence. She and Lisa Marie
continued to be regular visitors at Graceland, and Lisa Marie has fond memories of her time there.
"Graceland was very much like Disneyland for her."
She described Graceland as a place where she and her friends were free to engage
in wild antics without consequence, like riding golf carts around the property,
then destroying them. In this respect, she took after her father, who was also free-spirited.
Elvis died on August 16, 1977, when Lisa Marie was only 9 years old. His health went into decline,
and Lisa Marie began to sense something was wrong. Occasionally, she'd find her father losing his
balance. If there were no one else around, she would try to hold him up herself. With time,
his health became worse. She was at Graceland with Elvis when he died,
and the last time she saw him was at 4 a.m. She was up past her bedtime and Elvis kissed
her goodnight. She was the first to find her father's unconscious body the
next morning. She immediately called Elvis' ex-girlfriend Linda Thompson,
who wrote in her memoir A Little Thing Called Life that Lisa Marie was frantic.
Elvis' body remained at home for three days while Lisa Marie lingered by his body. Her mother,
Priscilla, learned the news from Elvis' road manager. When she arrived at Graceland,
she found Lisa Marie playing with her friends and assumed she didn't
understand what had happened. Lisa Marie remains reluctant to talk about that night.
She believes it would only serve to capitalize on her father's death.
After her divorce from Elvis, Priscilla Presley began a relationship with male
model Michael Edwards, who had a daughter the same age as Lisa Marie. The three of them
lived together in a home in Los Angeles, and Lisa Marie attended a nearby private school.
Although Priscilla painted a picture of a peaceful and quiet domestic life,
a much darker and disturbing dynamic was growing underneath. After Priscilla and Edwards split up,
he wrote a tell-all called "Priscilla, Elvis, and Me. In it, he described an attraction to
Lisa Marie, who was a minor. Priscilla admitted her relationship with Edwards wasn't what she
thought it was. And his public revelations of their private lives was a betrayal.
Lisa Marie Presley was only 17 when she met her first husband, musician Danny Keough. They met
at the Scientology Celebrity Center rehab facility, where Lisa Marie was sent after
dropping out of high school and using drugs. Presley and Keough married three years later,
on October 3, 1988. The marriage lasted six years. Their marriage was shrouded in secrecy,
likely in order to avoid publicity. The honeymoon was a Scientology cruise
in the Caribbean. They had two children, Danielle, now known as Riley, and Benjamin.
"It was probably the first person she'd met in the
music industry that didn't care or wasn't after something else."
But Presley believed that her wealth and celebrity created feelings of resentment
in Keough. She convinced herself the solution was to marry someone more like her. So only
20 days after the divorce was finalized, Presley married Michael Jackson. They'd
dated for four months before their wedding, which was a private ceremony in the Dominican
Republic. They announced their marriage at the 1994 MTV Music Awards and famously
kissed on stage. Presley later said that, quote, "probably the biggest mistake of [her] life" was
ending her marriage to Keough in order to marry Jackson. While the relationship with
Jackson dissolved after two years, she was able to maintain a close friendship with Keough.
The Lisa Marie Presley-Michael Jackson relationship seemed destined to fail. Presley
was coming out of a six-year marriage, and Jackson had already been accused of child molestation,
in the press. In an interview with Rolling Stone, Presley said that Jackson persuaded her
to believe his version of events and painted the accusations as extortion. She said that Jackson
was very convincing, and she was determined to help him. His philanthropy convinced her he was
a good person. Above all, Lisa Marie believed she and Jackson could have been a power couple.
Jackson had first been interested in her when she was a teenager,
but the feeling wasn't mutual, and she was in love with Danny Keough at the time. Years later,
Jackson reached out to her again with an offer to listen to her demo,
and she agreed. They kept in contact after that and, in a moment that Presley later regretted,
she told Jackson that she was unhappy in her marriage to Keough. This only motivated Jackson.
Once married, their relationship quickly deteriorated. The famous MTV kiss was
orchestrated by Jackson's PR team. In an infamous 1995 interview with Diane Sawyer,
Presley defended Jackson's friendships with children. Her instinct to protect
Jackson — who she thought was wrongfully accused — was used against her. Public
opinion of her changed. People thought she had an ulterior motive for getting
involved with Jackson, but Presley has said she really loved him at the time.
"I don't think Lisa does anything for the press.
You know, she doesn't do anything that's not based on honesty."
Lisa Marie Presley embarked on a third ill-fated marriage,
this time to actor Nicolas Cage. They met at a party in 2001. Like her, Cage was born into
a famous show business family. "Fredo, you're my older brother,
and I love you, but don't ever take sides with anyone against the family again."
Presley admired how Cage was able to separate himself from the Coppola legacy and pave his
own path to success. Their relationship was rocky from the start. They split several
times before tying the knot on August 10, 2002. A little over three months later on November 23,
the newlyweds attended the premiere of Cage's film Adaptation. He filed for divorce on the
25th. Presley attributed the sudden breakup to Cage being a "hothead." He admitted in a public
statement that he still loved Presley. Lisa Marie then issued her own statement expressing regret
that the marriage had ended but acknowledging that it was a mistake. Presley said the marriage was a
result of being wild and young. Her days of marrying for the fun of it were over.
Lisa Marie Presley thought she'd finally found stability when she married fourth husband,
musician Michael Lockwood, with whom she had twin girls. But after 10 years of marriage,
Presley filed for divorce in 2016, citing irreconcilable differences. Her lawyers claimed
Lockwood took advantage of her financially. She also didn't like Lockwood's approach to
parenting. In the immediate aftermath of their separation, Presley couldn't serve Lockwood
divorce papers because his whereabouts were unknown. In a dark turn of events,
Presley said she found child pornography on his computer, which led to their twins
being removed by child protective services. The girls were taken to live with their grandmother,
Priscilla until, a few months later, the police closed their investigation without charges.
The Presley-Lockwood divorce wasn't finalized until 2021. At first,
Presley was ordered to pay Lockwood's sizable legal fees. Luckily for her,
an appeals judge overturned the ruling, and Presley no longer owed Lockwood a thing.
No parent should have to bury their child, the saying goes, but, sadly,
Lisa Marie Presley did. In July 2020, at the age of 27, Benjamin Keough died from a self-inflicted
gunshot wound. The coroner determined his death to be suicide. Lisa Marie released a statement
saying she was heartbroken and inconsolable. There were reports that she and ex-husband,
Danny Keough, Benjamin's father, moved in together as they both grieved.
Keough's friend, Brandon Howard,
said he'd struggled with the pressure of the Presley family name prior to his suicide. He
felt pressured by the expectation that he would pursue an acting or musical career.
"I mean, he loves music, but I really kind of don't wanna — that's a lot to put on him,
you know? So I'm trying to, like, let him do his thing without pushing that on him so much."
But despite his depression, Keough was often the first among his friends to be there for others.
Howard added that Keough had a great laugh and was an excellent chef. In 2009, there were reports
that Keough signed a $5 million five-album deal with Universal Music, but that rumor was
denied by the company. Lisa Marie said that she supported Keough in pursuing his own interests.
Lisa Marie Presley has been private about her battle with opioid addiction,
but she opened up about her struggle when she wrote the foreword in Harry Nelson's book The
United States of Opioids. Her addiction began with a painkiller prescribed after the birth
of her daughters in 2008. Her foreword touched on the drug's corrosive nature,
which affected both her father, Elvis Presley, and her ex-husband, Michael Jackson.
Lisa Marie's drug addiction became public during her divorce trial,
and she admitted to using cocaine during her last year of marriage to Michael Lockwood.
During their custody battle, his legal team cited her devastation
over her son Benjamin Keough's death as a potential trigger for relapse.
"I'm not perfect. My father wasn't perfect. No one's perfect. It's what
do you do with it after you learn, and then you try and help others."
Lisa Marie had gone to rehab somewhere between three to five
times. Her therapist said her recovery was remarkable, calling her a "miracle."
When Lisa Marie Presley inherited the Elvis estate in 1993 at the age of 25, it was valued at $100
million. Elvis had appointed trustees to oversee her inheritance, and businessman Barry Siegel
emerged as manager of the assets. Within two years, he sold 85% of the trust's interest in the
$100 million estate, receiving only $40 million return. There was an additional $25 million
in stock. But by 2015, Lisa Marie's fortune had dwindled to $14,000. Her divorce records
revealed that, by 2018, she was $16.7 million in debt and had defaulted on a $6 million mortgage.
Presley sued Siegel, alleging that he liquidated her assets without informing
her. Her lawsuit also says that he bought a $9 million English manor from her trust while
using the funds as collateral. Siegel countersued, blaming Presley's excess
spending for the lost fortune. He said the sale of the assets cleared her debt.
In an interview with Playboy, Lisa Marie Presley recounted a moment of
outrage after seeing an E! True Hollywood Story report about her father. It contained
interviews with close acquaintances who had contributed to his downward spiral.
She believed they used the TV episode to attack his dignity, which was very important to him.
"He actually either stood up or fell off the commode and attempted to crawl for a distance."
Inspired by the incident and motivated by sadness and anger,
Presley went to a studio and recorded "Nobody Noticed It." As the only child
of Elvis Presley and as someone who saw him at his most vulnerable moments,
it's understandable that Lisa Marie would feel overprotective of his posthumous image.
In fact, Lisa Marie said that portrayals of Elvis have been, quote, "one disappointment
after the other." But she said those words at a screening of Baz Luhrmann's Elvis,
a film she thinks finally gets her father right. She applauded the movie on Instagram,
praising Austin Butler's performance as the King and saying she believes he deserves an Oscar. Lisa
Marie said the movie moved her to tears within five minutes of it starting. She also said it
conjured up "generational trauma" in a positive way. She is still grieving her son, Benjamin,
and is devastated he isn't alive to see it. She believes he would have loved the film, too.