Lisa Marie Presley, only child of Elvis, dies aged 54 after reported cardiac arrest
LOS ANGELES - Lisa Marie Presley, a musician and the only child of rock ‘n’ roll legend Elvis Presley, died on Thursday after being rushed to a Los Angeles-area hospital, her mother said.
“It is with a heavy heart that I must share the devastating news that my beautiful daughter Lisa Marie has left us,” her mother, Priscilla Presley, said in a statement.
“She was the most passionate, strong and loving woman I have ever known. We ask for privacy as we try to deal with this profound loss,” the statement added.
Lisa suffered cardiac arrest in her home in the Los Angeles suburb of Calabasas, according to entertainment website TMZ. She was then taken to hospital on Thursday.
She was born in 1968 and was the owner of her father’s Graceland mansion in Memphis, a popular tourist attraction. She was nine years old when Elvis died at Graceland in 1977.
The father and daughter were extremely close, with Elvis once flying her out to Idaho after she said she had never seen snow. Her father named his 1958 Convair 880 private jet “the Lisa Marie”.
Her own music career began with a 2003 debut album To Whom It May Concern. It was followed by 2005‘s Now What, and both hit the top 10 of the Billboard 200 album chart.
A third album, Storm and Grace, was released in 2012.
She was married four times. She wed pop star Michael Jackson, in 1994, just 20 days after her divorce from her first husband, musician Danny Keough.
The high-profile couple divorced in 1996 as Jackson was battling child molestation allegations.
Presley married actor Nicholas Cage, a huge fan of her father, in 2002. Cage filed for divorce four months later.
Her fourth marriage was to her guitarist and music producer Michael Lockwood. Their divorce was finalised in 2021.
She had four children. Her only son, Benjamin Keough, died by suicide in 2020 at age 27. Daughter Riley Keough, 33, is an actress.
Her two other daughters are twins Harper and Finley Lockwood, 14.
On Thursday, Lisa was rushed to the hospital in California, with US media reporting she was in intensive care following a cardiac arrest.
The 54-year-old was in an induced coma on life support, TMZ reported, citing unnamed sources.
The outlet said she had been “unresponsive” when her housekeeper discovered her at her home on Thursday morning in the celebrity-studded Los Angeles suburb of Calabasas.
Her ex-husband, Danny Keough, who also lives at the property, performed CPR until paramedics arrived and transported her to the hospital.
The outlet said its sources stressed it had not been a suicide attempt by the singer.
Lisa and her mother were seen together on Tuesday at the Golden Globe awards in Beverly Hills, where Austin Butler was awarded Best Actor in a drama for his turn as rock ‘n roll legend Elvis Presley in Baz Luhrmann’s biopic Elvis.
Butler, whose fizzing performance has earned wide praise, thanked the two women during his acceptance speech.
“I also want to thank our incredible producers and Warner Bros and the Presley family. Thank you, guys. Thank you for opening your hearts, your memories, your home to me. Lisa Marie and Priscilla, I love you forever,” Butler said.
In a foreword of a book The United States Of Opioids: A Prescription For Liberating A Nation In Pain, Lisa wrote about her struggle with addiction.
In a 2022 People Magazine essay, Lisa said that her life had been struck with death, grief and loss since her childhood, writing that the death of her only son Benjamin had been a devastating blow to her and her three daughters.
“Grief does not stop or go away in any sense, a year, or years after the loss,” she said. “Grief is something you will have to carry with you for the rest of your life, in spite of what certain people or our culture wants us to believe.” - REUTERS, AFP, NYTIMES
Get The New Paper on your phone with the free TNP app. Download from the Apple App Store or Google Play Store now