Elvis Presley is still one of the most famous people who ever lived. And despite the fact that he was the best-known celebrity in the world for a time, there are still many questions about his life that fans don’t completely understand. One of the biggest questions was the nature of his relationship with his wife Priscilla Presley, especially when they first met. But now the former wife of Elvis is responding head-on to those questions.
Elvis was 10 years older than Priscilla and the couple first met when he was deployed to Germany at 24. This meant that Priscilla was all of 14 years old. A new movie by Sofia Coppola, Priscilla, focuses entirely on the couple’s personal relationship. At the Venice Film Festival (via TMZ), Priscilla was asked whether the two were having sex at that point. She insists they were not, and that at that time their relationship was about her ability to listen to him. She explained…
I was the person who really, really sat there to listen and to comfort him. That was really our connection. Even though I was 14, I was older in life, though not in numbers. That was the attraction. People think ‘Oh it was sex, it was this.’ Not at all. I never had sex with him. He was very kind, very soft, very loving. But he also respected the fact I was only 14 years old. We were more in line in thought.
It’s not hard to imagine that Elvis Presley had plenty to say. He was already a huge star, in a way few people had ever been, when he joined the army and had to spend a few years overseas. Priscilla says he talked about his hopes and fears and discussed his mother, who he was famously very close to. Priscilla was apparently the right person to confide in for the singer, as she says she never told anybody about the fact that she and Elvis were close.
Priscilla says even her own parents did not understand their relationship. It's not difficult to at least understand why there would be so many questions surrounding a relationship that not only started this way, but also evolved into something quite different.
Eventually, the relationship did change, of course. Lisa Marie Presley, who passed away earlier this year, was born in 1968 when Priscilla was 23. She and Elvis had married two years prior. They would divorce in 1973, though Priscilla made clear here that she considers Elvis the love of her life, and says her decision to leave was due to the start’s lifestyle, not her personal feelings about the man.
We saw one perspective on the couple’s relationship in Baz Luhrmann’s flashy Elvis biopic a couple of years ago. Now, in Priscilla, we will see another version, one based on Priscilla’s own memoirs. The Elvis Presley estate has already slammed the film, so it certainly won't be without controversy.
