Priscilla's legacy - 'HOW I WANT TO BE REMEMBERED'

The star finally sets the record straight about her relationship with Elvis

As the final credits to the movie Priscilla rolled at the Venice Film Festival last year, lead actress Cailee Spaeny fidgeted nervously in her seat.

Next to her sat Priscilla Presley, the woman whose life she’d just laid bare on the screen in front of them.

“She turned to me and said, ‘I watched my life through you and through this movie,’” Cailee, 25, later shared. “And the weight off my shoulders when she said that was massive. I broke down in tears.”

Priscilla has spent a lifetime in a gilded cage, known as the woman who married Elvis, the King of rock’n’roll. Then, she was the woman who gave birth to Elvis’ child. Then, the woman who left Elvis.

Now, as executive producer of Oscar-winning director Sofia Coppola’s new biopic, she is getting to see her story being told on her own terms. At 78, it seems Priscilla feels she is finally being seen as a person in her own right.

Priscilla opens in cinemas on February 1 and is already being talked about in Hollywood circles as an awards contender.

Based on Priscilla’s memoir Elvis and Me, it traces her extraordinary life. Her mother, Ann, gave birth to Priscilla when she was just 19, and six months later, her navy pilot dad, James Wagner, died in a plane crash.

Three years later, Ann tied the knot with Air Force offi cer Paul Beaulieu, and Priscilla, “a shy, pretty, little girl”, moved with her family to diff erent air bases every few years.