Lisa Marie Presley, 54, died on Thursday after a heart arrest.
She was famous before she could talk, having been born in 1968 to Elvis and Priscilla Presley. Lisa Marie’s parents divorced when she was four, and her father died when she was nine. She grew up in his shadow and bore the weight of his tremendous legacy. Beginning at the age of 12, her mother’s boyfriend sexually abused her for three years. She was in a Scientology drug treatment program by the age of 17. She quit the company.
Lisa Marie’s life was made public even though she began her music career at 35. Her father’s icy look made checkout line magazine covers spectacular stuff. Her four marriages and divorces provided food for the legendary beast. Her first husband, musician Danny Keough, was a longtime acquaintance who performed CPR on her during her heart attack. She was married to childhood friend and pop legend Michael Jackson (1994-1996), actor Nicolas Cage (three months in 2002), and music producer Michael Lockwood (2006 to 2016). Her children from her first and second marriages include actress Riley Keough, 33, son Benjamin Storm Keough, 27, who died in 2020, and twin daughters Harper Vivienne Ann and Finley Aaron Love Lockwood, 14.
Lisa Marie attended the Golden Globes two days before her death to support Elvis and Austin Butler, who won for his role as her father. During red-carpet interviews, she was seen lovingly clutching her father’s friend Jerry Schilling. She told Schilling, “I’m going to grab your arm,” while chatting to Extra on camera. Her words became slower. A showgoer alleges she stumbled.
According to TMZ, she complained of stomach issues in the morning two days later, the day she died. Her housekeeper later discovered her unresponsive. Her ex-husband Danny performed CPR until rescuers came. She died hours after being induced into a coma and put on life support. Her father and paternal grandmother died at 42 and 46 from heart attacks.
Lisa Marie’s latter years were painful and difficult, despite her unknown condition.
In July 2020, her only son, Benjamin, committed suicide. Lisa Marie said it was awful. “Since my son’s death two years ago,” she wrote for National Grief Awareness Day in August. “His death detonated and destroyed” her and her three children. Everyday.” She stated it was “very lonely” since “family” expected her to move on, but mourning never “finished. Period.” “I have to make a real choice to keep going every day,” she said. She added, “I keep going for my girls.”
In her first post-Ben comment, she called the pain “suffocating and bottomless” and said, “I will never be the same.”
She spoke at Graceland on Elvis’s 88th birthday, ten days before her death. “I’m not kidding,” she told the gathering, “you’re the only individuals that can bring me out of my house.”
Lisa Marie’s half-brother claims her final years “weren’t easy” in tribute.
Elvis and Priscilla’s only child, she had a half-brother, Navarone Garcia, through her mother’s relationship with Marco Garibaldi. “I hope you are now at peace and happy with your Dad and your son at your side,” the 35-year-old artist wrote to his “big sister,” 19 years older. “I know the past several years weren’t easy for you, and I wish things had been different between us,” without elaborating. “I love and pray for you, sister. I’m speechless.”
The “Dirty Laundry” singer’s marriages—to Jackson, despite his sexual assault charges, and to Cage for three months—made headlines. However, her final marriage to Lockwood ended in divorce and years of bitter allegations. In court filings, Lockwood moved to strip her of custody, stating he was scared she would “relapse into drug and alcohol dependency” after Ben’s suicide. He worried that Lisa Marie’s house, where Ben died, may have firearms for the girls.
After their 10-year marriage dissolved in 2016, they fought over custody of the girls. In 2017, Priscilla took custody of the girls. Lockwood’s attorney called Presley’s claim of “disturbing” photographs on his computer “very dramatic, false, and unfounded.” Lockwood accused his ex of drug use and forbade their children from attending Elvis’ 85th birthday celebration in Memphis, Tennessee.
“Michael had been hoping for a rapid and complete recovery since her children needed her,” Lockwood’s rep told Entertainment Tonight after Lisa Marie’s death. Lockwood remarried last year. Sad that didn’t happen. Michael’s world has flipped. He’s with both daughters.”
They divorced five years after splitting in 2016. He accused her of lying about her financial problems, which were more than $100 million as her megastar dad’s sole heir.
Lisa Marie acknowledged “abusing cocaine horribly” in her 2017 deposition, which Radar obtained. “The previous three years, I… had to go to rehab multiple times,” she stated, estimating three to five Mexican rehab stays. “I messed up. I couldn’t.” She revealed she took “painkillers, narcotics, and alcohol” when asked. “I abused cocaine during our last year together. It was horrible.”
Their 2007 post-nuptial agreement waiving spousal support was upheld in 2017. She had to pay $100,000 for Lockwood’s legal bills.
She bravely admitted to opioid addiction in 2019.
In 2018, she admitted to addiction on Today after her deposition evidence made waves. She was “proud” of her progress, which her therapist dubbed a miracle. She says, “I don’t know how you’re alive.”
The following year, Presley openly revealed her “addiction to opiates and painkillers” in a foreword for Harry Nelson’s book The United States of Opioids: A Prescription for Liberating a Nation in Pain. She was “grateful to be alive” after a doctor recommended painkillers for pain after the delivery of her twins in 2008. She said, “It just took a short-term prescription of opioids in the hospital for me to feel the need to keep taking them” due to their severe addictiveness. She appealed to “stop blaming and judging” those who struggle.
Nelson tells Yahoo Entertainment today that Lisa Marie was brave to write that preface and confess her opioid addiction for the first time just because she knew she would benefit others.
“She will always be a true partner in the effort to destigmatize addiction and recovery and to halt the opioid and overdose crises,” he says. “May her memory be a gift and be remembered—among all the other appropriate tributes—as someone whose compassion for the pain of others drove her to be a force for good in the world.”
Nelson, who had known Lisa Marie for a decade, last spoke to her a year ago. He wanted to know if she was interested in “another writing and campaigning project we had discussed.” I didn’t want to push it after her son Benjamin’s awful death. I hoped time would ease her anguish. She was still grieving that horrible loss. Unprepared. I advised her to contact me when she was ready to be respectful and not pushy. I couldn’t talk to her again.”
Elvis’s heir claimed she owed $16.7 million in 2018 during Presley’s divorce.
That year, she sued Barry Siegel, a former business manager, for allegedly squandering her $100 million wealth, leaving her with $14,000 in cash, $500,000 in credit card debt, unspecified unpaid taxes, and a foreclosed English home.
Lisa Marie inherited $100 million from her father, aged 25. After a few questionable economic decisions, she sold 85 percent of Elvis Presley Enterprise in 2005, according to Fortune. Graceland and licensing her father’s image made $40 million a year. The media criticized her expenditures. The sale paid $100 million, including her $25 million debt, and she kept a 15% ownership and controlled Graceland and its original assets.
Lisa Marie sued Siegel for “reckless and incompetent” “mismanagement” that reduced her $100 million trust before and after the sale. He accused her of “twice wasting” her father’s riches, considering her 2005 payoff as the second time, and “seeking to blame others instead of taking responsibility for her conduct” in legal documents.
