Lisa Marie Presley Warned Riley Keough She'd Have to Be 'Really Good' at Acting or Risk Being a 'Joke' as a Celeb's Kid

When Riley Keough decided to pursue an acting career, her mom Lisa Marie Presley had a warning: be great, or run the risk of not being taken seriously.

Keough, 35, opened up about her late mom’s advice on an episode of the Podcrushed podcast on Wednesday, Dec. 11, explaining that Lisa Marie was well aware that her daughter’s status as the child of a celebrity could hinder her dreams.

“My mom was very intense about being a celebrity’s child,” she said. “She was basically like, ‘If you’re gonna do anything, you’re gonna be like, a joke to a lot of people. So if you’re gonna do something, you have to be really good at it. You can’t just try it.’”

Lisa Marie, who died in January 2023 at age 54, knew well the pitfalls of being the kid of a star, as her father was Elvis Presley, and her mother the actress Priscilla Presley.

Keough said she and her younger brother Benjamin, who died in 2020 at age 27, kept their mom’s advice in mind.

Related: Riley Keough Reflects on the Presley Family 'Curse' and What It's Like to Now Be the Sole Heir of Graceland

“I felt a lot of pressure, I think. And so that was kind of in my head and in my brother’s head,” she told Podcrushed hosts Penn Badgley, Sophie Ansari and Nava Kavelin. “She was very much like, ‘You can’t just be a celebrity kid. If you’re gonna act or sing or whatever you’re gonna do, you have to be better at it or as good as everybody else.’”

The Daisy Jones & the Six actress continued, “I felt like I put a lot of pressure on myself, you know?”

Luckily for Keough, her risk seems to have paid off. After booking her feature film debut on her very first audition (for The Runaways in 2010), she’s carved a successful acting career with roles in movies like Mad Max: Fury Road and Zola.

Related: Lisa Marie Presley 'Felt This Desire to Be Alone' When She Left Scientology, Riley Keough Reveals (Exclusive)

Her starring turn in Daisy Jones & the Six even earned her best actress nominations at the Emmy Awards and the Golden Globes.

In October, Keough — who is the sole trustee of Lisa Marie’s estate — helped finish and publish her mother’s posthumous memoir From Here to the Great Unknown.

"A lot of our life was very happy," she told PEOPLE that month. "The tragedy within my family has been so heartbreaking, but we also had an incredible amount of fun and these beautiful experiences that I don't know if people get to have very often. I feel extremely grateful for that. We're mostly always in laughter and living in a comedy. That's how we went through our life. My life has not been a tragedy. It's been a large collection of many short stories of all genres."

Read the original article on People