Riley Keough can lay claim to fame on quite a number of counts. To start with, her mother, musician Lisa Marie Presley, was the only daughter of legendary performer Elvis Presley. At the same time, Keough has already charted her own path to renown with an acting career that rivals some of the best in the business.
The California-born star has been acting since 2010, when she had just turned 20. In her first on-screen gig, she portrayed the musician Marie Currie in the biographical drama The Runaways, also starring Dakota Fanning. Her top roles since then have come in productions like Magic Mike, Mad Max: Fury Road (which was quite tumultuous), and The Girlfriend Experience, which earned her a Golden Globe nomination for Best Actress – Miniseries or Television Film.
It perhaps makes sense then, that when it was time to choose a life partner, Keough went with a movie stuntman; an important job in the industry, but one that keeps her husband, the Australian Ben Smith-Petersen, mostly away from the limelight.
Riley Keough & Ben Smith-Petersen's Illustrious Wedding Ceremony
Keough and Smith-Petersen met in 2012 in Namibia, during the filming of Mad Max. Principal photography for the George Miller post-apocalyptic action movie took place in the country's Dorob National Park. Keough was playing a character called Capable, while her future husband had been hired as a stunt performer.
According to the actress, though, it wasn't until they both traveled to Sydney, Australia for some re-shoots that they really got to connect. This was made easier by the fact that the crew Down Under was now much smaller.
After seeing each other for about one and a half years, the couple announced their engagement in August 2014. They tied the knot in February of the following year, in an illustrious wedding ceremony in Napa, California that was attended by -- among others -- Zoë Kravitz and Dakota Johnson.
Keough told USA Today in 2016 that as soon as they had started going out, she knew she had met the one: "Two weeks into dating him, we were at a gas station and I was like, 'I could see myself having kids with this person.' It was kind of like I knew I was meeting my husband."
Mad Max Kickstarted Ben Smith-Petersen's Career
Mad Max was Smith-Petersen's biggest job of his career when he landed it, but he had been performing stunts in movies since 2011. According to his IMDb profile page, his first gig in this line of work was in an episode of the Australian period-drama series called Wild Boys.
He must have done some exemplary work, because within two years he had already been tapped for similar roles in the movies The Great Gatsby and The Hunger Games: Catching Fire. He was not credited for his work on the latter, but he was very quickly building an impressive portfolio.
After these experiences working with Hollywood's best, Smith-Petersen returned to his roots briefly, with another job on Network Ten's romantic comedy-drama, Wonderland. This was in 2014, the same year he got to cameo in The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies.
Smith-Peterson Is Taking His Stunt Work To The Next Level
Since then, he has progressed from just performing to rigging and coordinating stunts on major sets. His work spans projects like The Forever Purge, Suicide Squad, and its 2021 sequel. He has also featured as a stunt double for Jai Courtney in Storm Boy and Garrett Hedlund in Triple Frontier.
Ben Smith-Petersen Has Also Tried Acting
Smith-Petersen is two years his wife's junior; He was born in July 1991 in Byron Bay, New South Wales, Australia. His love for stunting dates back to his childhood, when he was introduced to flying trapezes by a friend of his mother.
He took to the pastime like a duck to water and quickly honed his craft at Circus Arts Australia in his hometown under the guidance of the institute director, Belinda Hultgren.
After his TV breakthrough in Wild Boys, Smith-Petersen also started taking on acting jobs. In the 2012 film Agent Provocateur (also styled as Agent Elite), he played a major character by the name Big Phantom. He has also since appeared in the American movies Habit and Aileen Wuornos: American Boogeywoman (both 2021). In Mad Max, he was credited in the cast as Chanting War Boy and Red Flare Warrior. Smith-Peterson also has a cameo appearance in Keough's new show Daisy Jones & The Six. They filmed a sex scene for the show, which Keough found very awkward.
In Smith-Petersen, Keough feels that she has found a balanced man she can be madly in love with while simultaneously being his best friend. "Not to say we aren't infatuated with each other; we're obsessed with each other," she said in the USA Today interview. "[But] I just always felt very comfortable with him, always wanted to be near him, even from the beginning."
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