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Riley Keough wasn't ready for another relationship. Then she met an Australian stuntman.

When Riley Keough met her future husband, she wasn't looking for a relationship.

In fact, the Daisy Jones & The Six star had only just broken up with her former Magic Mike co-star Alex Pettyfer. 

The pair met before the film began, but it was a moment Pettyfer says he still remembers. 

Watch the trailer for Daisy Jones & The Six. Post continues after video. 


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"She was the first woman in my life that I fell in love with at first sight," he told Radio Andy in 2018. "And you know what? she had this f**king crazy pink, purple hair." 

"...I didn't know she was part of the film," he later recalled. "... I fell in love with her. We were dating before we even started filming."

The pair were briefly engaged before they split up for good. 

Keough was filming Mad Max: Fury Road at the time and that's where she met Australian stuntman Ben Smith-Petersen. 

A year later, when they reunited to reshoot some of the film, Keough saw Smith-Petersen in a new light. 

"I was just out of a relationship that I needed to recover from, so definitely wasn’t looking for anything. Ben was on set and I saw him," she later wrote in a personal essay for Vogue in 2022. 

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"It had been a year, and he just felt more grown up and there was something about him. I was like, 'Oh wow.'"

Riley Keough and Ben Smith-Petersen. Image: Instagram @rileyjeough.

There was a moment during the trip when she realised she didn't want to be apart from him. 

"We were in the water and looking around at all the beautiful houses and we started making a joke about when we get married, which house should we buy? It was a silly joke because we had only hung out for a day," she recalled. "But in hindsight, it’s funny because we did get married."

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Just a week into "hanging out", she decided she "[couldn't] leave him" in Australia when she left to go back to the United States. 

"I [felt] this [was] something really special," she wrote. 

Their whirlwind romance continued when she met his family in Byron Bay the following week and then later when she brought him to meet hers in England. 

"I flew to England and then 24 hours later he got on a flight and met me there and he never went home," she said.

The pair moved in together quickly and six months into their relationship, Smith-Peterson asked Keough to marry him. 

"My husband is such a good person," she later wrote. "He's calm and loyal and strong and sensitive. He's my best friend."

The pair tied the knot in 2015 and have since welcomed a daughter. 

Keough's mother, Lisa Marie Presley, died from cardiac arrest in January 2023. 

In a letter read out at the funeral, Keough honoured Presley's life and praised her for being "the most loving mother".

"I hope I can love my daughter the way you loved me, the way you loved my brother and my sisters," she wrote. 

"I remember everything. I remember you giving me baths as a baby, I remember you driving me in my car seat listening to Aretha Franklin," Smith-Petersen read aloud to an audience. "I remember the way you’d cuddle me when I’d come into your bed at night and the way you smelled.… I remember you singing me and my brother [Benjamin Keough] lullabies at night and how you’d lay with us until you fell asleep."

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 "I remember how it felt to be loved by the most loving mother I’ve ever known.”

Riley Keough and Lisa Marie Presley with her twin daughters in 2017. Image: Getty.

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Keough and her family also lost her little brother Benjamin Keough in 2020. He died by suicide at 27 years old. 

He was buried alongside his grandfather, Elvis Presley, his great-grandmother mother Gladys, great-grandfather Vernon and great-great-grandmother, Minnie Mae Presley. His mother has since been buried next to her son too.

Keough later told the New York Times she was "totally debilitated" following his death. 

"The first four or five months, I couldn't get out of bed. I was totally debilitated. I couldn't talk for two weeks," she said. 

The actor has since made it her mission to raise awareness around mental health, telling the Just For Variety podcast that people have preconceived "ideas about suicide and what that looks like," she wants others to know that anyone could be struggling and "can take their life." Keough added that "taking away that bias around suicide ... was really important" to her.

Keough is currently on a promotional tour for her newly released series, Daisy Jones & The Six.

She recently shared that Smith-Petersen makes a cameo in the series. 

"I don't want to like spoil it, but the producers thought it would be funny if he was in that scene," she told Entertainment Tonight. "They were like, 'Do you want Ben to do this?' And I was like, 'Yeah, that's hilarious.'"

Feature Image: Getty.

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