How Priscilla was transformed by The King
Priscilla Presley rarely speaks for very long in Priscilla, the new movie about her life. Instead, her eye makeup delivers a bold statement about the truth of being married to Elvis.
Priscilla Presley rarely speaks for very long in Priscilla, the new movie about her life. Instead, her eye makeup delivers a bold statement about the truth of being married to Elvis.
In a quick opening sequence, Priscilla, portrayed by Cailee Spaeny, applies black eyeliner to create a perfect batwing. False eyelashes – real human hair, the box promises – come next, on top of a thick swath of mascara.
Under the director Sofia Coppola’s trancelike gaze, closeups bring attention to Priscilla’s every blink.
The state of her eye makeup – from none to heavy to almost washed clean – tracks her evolution from girl to wife to free woman.
The film, which opens nationwide on January 18, is the story of Priscilla’s transformation through her relationship with Elvis.
The movie, written by Coppola, was co-executive produced by Priscilla Presley and is based on her 1985 memoir Elvis and Me.
“The eye makeup was such a huge part in the emotional journey of Priscilla’s storytelling and how it was really a part of her fitting into his world,” says Spaeny, 25, whose Priscilla, though intoxicated by Elvis, eventually abandons his idea of beauty.
“You see this young girl mould herself into who she thinks she needs to be for this man, and then the journey of her finally shedding that.”
Even when she’s in labour, Priscilla glues on false eyelashes before going to the hospital. When she cries, her face streaks with black mascara. Her eyes are so central that A24, the studio that is releasing the movie, is promoting a $US49 ($73) “Priscilla” eye makeup set with the cosmetics company Half Magic that includes mascara, liquid eyeliner and a guide for a do-it-yourself 1960s cat eye. (On set, makeup artists used a Tom Ford eye-defining liquid pen to create Spaeny’s look.)
Priscilla meets Elvis as a 14-year-old military brat living in West Germany, while he was a 24-year-old Army serviceman keen to spend time with American women. Soon, the two are dating, and Elvis dictates how she should dress – no prints, only solid colours – and tells her to dye her brown hair jet black. When it comes to makeup, he instructs Priscilla to wear heavy black eyeliner, according to her memoir. If she didn’t apply enough, he sent her back to the mirror to try again. She’d always thought less was more when it came to makeup. But, of course, more was always more when it came to Elvis.
“I remember having meetings about how she looked in bed first thing in the morning and this idea that he never saw her without a face on,” said Coppola, who depicts Priscilla even sleeping in makeup. (Presley has said she never went without makeup in front of Elvis.)
“She always knew there were women waiting at the gate for him. She, I think, felt this pressure to always be his ideal.”
In her memoir, Presley describes Elvis’s influence over her. “He taught me everything: how to dress, how to walk, how to apply makeup and wear my hair, how to behave, how to return love – his way,” Presley writes in the book, which she wrote with Sandra Harmon.
“Over the years he became my father, husband, and very nearly God.”
At the end of the film, after Elvis and Priscilla’s marriage crumbles, her face is washed clean of all but a little makeup, and she has stopped dyeing her hair. She climbs into her car, the gates of Graceland swing open, and she trains her eyes on the road out of there.
Priscilla is in cinemas from January 18.
