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Cailee Spaeny is Hollywood’s next big thing. The actress, 25, plays Priscilla Presley in Sofia Coppola’s new biographical drama about Elvis Presley’s wife. The film, titled simply Priscilla, is based on Priscilla’s 1985 memoir Elvis and Me.

If you haven’t seen Priscilla yet, you might be asking: who is Cailee Spaeny? She is one of young Hollywood’s brightest and most talented stars. For Priscilla, Cailee earned her first Golden Globe nomination. Cailee’s up for Best Performance by a Female Actor in a Motion Picture, Drama. She also won the Volpi Cup for Best Actress at the Venice Film Festival. From her past in Missouri to her dynamic with co-star Jacob Elordi, here’s everything you need to know about Cailee.

Kirsten Dunst Recommended Cailee to Sofia Coppola

Kirsten Dunst, who has collaborated with Sofia on films like The Virgin Suicides, Marie Antoinette, and The Beguiled, urged the director to cast Cailee as Priscilla. “Kirsten is like a sister to me, and when she recommended Cailee, I paid attention,” Sofia, 52, told W magazine. Kirsten worked with Cailee on the upcoming film Civil War.

The director offered Cailee the role of Priscilla during their first meeting. “Sofia pulled out her iPad and showed me some photos of Priscilla,” Cailee said. “She said, ‘I think you could do it!’ I felt like Kirsten had passed the torch to me.” And the rest is history!

Cailee was able to speak with Priscilla several times before filming. Their first meeting was 4 hours long. Priscilla watched the biopic alongside Cailee at the Venice Film Festival. “She said, ‘That was a great performance.” That was the first time I’d ever heard that from her,” Cailee told TODAY.com about Priscilla’s reaction.

Cailee Has a Close Bond With Co-star Jacob Elordi

Jacob, 26, stars as Elvis in Priscilla. Over the course of filming, Jacob and Cailee established a close relationship. “Cailee is incredibly sensitive and deep, somebody who feels everything and has seen lives well beyond her own, like Priscilla,” the Euphoria star told InStyle. “It inspired a very real need for tenderness and care in me that felt not too dissimilar to the relationship we played in the film.”

Cailee admitted that couldn’t have tackled Elvis and Priscilla’s “tumultuous” times if she “didn’t trust him [Jacob] as a person and as an actor. But I did, absolutely.” Jacob gushed that “working was Cailee was a dream” and called her “the real deal.”

Cailee Grew Up in Missouri

Cailee was born in Springfield, Missouri. Cailee knew from an early age that she wanted to pursue acting and even convinced her parents to let her drop out of school to do so. After getting signed in Los Angeles, Cailee joined a local community theater in Missouri. She became drawn to Sofia’s work at a young age.

“Especially growing up in southern Missouri in the church, I felt like no one had ever really seen or accepted the teen angst a girl can have, the sadness within young teenage girls,” the actress told InStyle. “It wasn’t until I watched Sofia’s films that I was like, Oh, someone has acknowledged that you can be a young, cute girl but also have real darkness and angst in you, and this longing for another life or love or whatever it is.”

Cailee Made Her Film Debut in ‘Pacific Rim Uprising’

Cailee was just 18 when she made her feature film debut in Pacific Rim Uprising. That same year, she also appeared in Bad Times at the El Royale, On the Basis of Sex, and Vice. In 2020, she starred in The Craft: Legacy. Cailee’s had notable TV roles as well in Devs, Mare of Easttown, and The First Lady.

Cailee Was First Discovered in a Kids’ Cover Band

Cailee can also sing, and that’s how she was initially discovered. She was singing in a kids’ rock cover band when she was noticed for the first time. This moment led to her first trip to Los Angeles.