Lisa-Marie Presley’s Daughter, Riley Keough, On The Dangers Of Using Personal Grief To Act After Loss Of Brother And Mother

There are many schools of thought to the art of acting—classical, method, and so on. Riley Keough has been acting for 20 years now, but she adamantly avoids tapping into her own personal grief to perform in emotional scenes, all due to safety concerns.

35-year-old Keough is the granddaughter of Elvis Presley and daughter of the late Lisa Marie Presley. Her mother was just 54 when she died suddenly last year of heart failure, not too dissimilar form how Elvis died. Riley’s brother, Benjamin, died by suicide in the summer of 2020 at the age of just 27. All this Keough has drawn a hard line from her work.

Riley Keough explains her refusal to use her personal grief to act

Riley recently starred in Under the Bridge, a true crime drama miniseries that began streaming on Hulu this April. In it, she plays Rebecca Godfrey, a real novelist and nonfiction writer. She also serves as an executive producer.

RELATED: Elvis Presley’s Family Deems Graceland Gravesite ‘Disrespectful’

Under the Bridge is based on the book of the same name by Godfrey herself. It explores the 1997 murder of 14-year-old Reena Virk, who had been invited to a party before she was beaten and murdered. The subject matter is emotional and requires extreme depth from the performers, but Keough did not get her inspiration from a real, personal place.

“I don’t typically use my own life in my acting career because I think I would be insane,” Keough explained when asked how the many losses in her life influenced the way she might act. “I think it would be very unhealthy for me personally.”

The two shared a lot in common, but only to an extent

Tragedy defined much of Godfrey’s own personal life. The Toronto native lost her brother when she was 13 and he 16; her sibling, Jonathan, “fell from a bluff near their home and drowned,” according to People. Godfrey herself was just 54 years old when she died in the fall of 2022 due to lung cancer.

Despite the astonishing overlap, Keough saw bigger differences where it really counted.

“She has a lot of anger and unresolved [emotions],” Keough noted of her character. As a result, she added, her own personal pain “didn’t totally apply” to trying to play Godfrey; even if she wanted to tap into her own real experiences, Godfrey processes things differently, and so such an approach would never work.