Priscilla Presley Wipes Away Tears After Watching 'Priscilla' at Venice Film Festival
“It’s very difficult to sit and watch a film about you and about your life and about your love," Priscilla Presley told reporters of watching 'Priscilla'
Priscilla Presley was the center of attention Monday at the Venice Film Festival.
When Presley, 78, attended the world premiere of Sofia Coppola's new film Priscilla — a biopic based on Presley's 1985 memoir Elvis and Me — in Venice, the Presley family matriarch appeared to grow emotional following the screening.
A video shared to Twitter, now known as X, by The Hollywood Reporter's Alex Ritman showed Presley wiping tears from her eyes as the audience applauded her, 52-year-old Coppola and the film's stars Cailee Spaeny and Jacob Elordi, who portray Priscilla and Elvis Presley, respectively. (The A24 film was granted a SAG-AFTRA Interim Agreement amid the strike since it was filmed in Canada with a non-AMPTP studio.)
Coppola could be seen giving Presley a hug as Spaeny, 25, and Elordi, 26, looked on. In total, the movie received a standing ovation from the audience in Venice that lasted seven minutes, according to Variety.
Related: 'Priscilla' Reviews Call Sofia Coppola Film 'Piercingly Honest,' 'Pleasurably Emotional Experience'
Presley also appeared emotional when she attended a press conference for the movie earlier in the day and called Elvis "the love of my life" even as she discussed her decision to divorce the icon in 1972.
“It’s very difficult to sit and watch a film about you and about your life and about your love," she told reporters. "I think Sofia did an amazing job, she did her homework. We spoke a couple of times and I really put everything out for her that I could.”
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Priscilla did not initially appear at the podium alongside Coppola, Spaeny and Elordi at the press conference, but she took the microphone when asked what aspects of the film moved her most.
"It was the lifestyle that was so difficult for me, and I think any woman can relate to that. But it didn’t mar our relationship. We still remained very close," Priscilla recalled of how she and Elvis, who died at 42 in 1977, handled their relationship post-divorce.
"And of course, we had our daughter, and I made sure that he saw her all the time. It was like we never left each other," she added.
Priscilla, which tells the story of Priscilla and Elvis's love story and marriage from Priscilla's point of view, comes one year after director Baz Luhrmann's Elvis movie proved a box office success, with Austin Butler in the lead role as the legendary performer. Olivia DeJonge appeared as Priscilla in that movie.
"When teenage Priscilla Beaulieu meets Elvis Presley at a party, the man who is already a meteoric rock-and-roll superstar becomes someone entirely unexpected in private moments: a thrilling crush, an ally in loneliness, a vulnerable best friend," reads an official A24 synopsis for Priscilla. "Through Priscilla’s eyes, Sofia Coppola tells the unseen side of a great American myth in Elvis and Priscilla's long courtship and turbulent marriage, from a German army base to his dream-world estate at Graceland, in this deeply felt and ravishingly detailed portrait of love, fantasy, and fame."
Priscilla is in theaters Oct. 27.
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