The Riddle of Riley Keough - The New York Times

Whether she’s weighing matters of money and sex in “The Girlfriend Experience” or staring down a romantic rival in “American Honey,” Keough, 32, certainly looks like a star — it helps that she inherited ice-blue eyes and a chin curved like a question mark from her grandfather Elvis Presley — even though her screen presence remains unusually impassive and mysterious?

“She’s one of those actors who so effortlessly lands in the feet of her character that it almost seems like it isn’t acting,” said the director Janicza Bravo, who pursued Keough to play Stefani, an exotic dancer with murky intentions, for her raucous new comedy “Zola.” You’re compelled by Stefani even when you don’t fully trust her, and Bravo knew Keough could play that ambiguity to the hilt.

“I have an ability that’s really hard in this industry to be kind of like, ‘Meh,’” Keough told me, shrugging.

Keough had no qualms about visiting her father; once, she even told him, “When I grow up, I want to be poor like you.” She hadn’t known then how offensive her remark was, but that bifurcated childhood with her brother, Benjamin, would come in handy in her 20s, when Keough pursued work as an actress: She had amassed enough authenticity to play regular people as well as enough privilege to live her life without much worry.

And blasé suits her: In movies like “American Honey” and “Logan Lucky,” about hustlers just trying to get by, her characters feel real and lived-in rather than condescended to.

Or, as a recent tweet put it, “Riley Keough understands the white working class way better than J.D.

“I didn’t want it to be ‘American Honey,’ this really naturalistic, understated performance,” Keough said.

At first, when Keough was trying to find Stefani’s voice, she would text recordings to Bravo: “And Janicza was always like, ‘More, more.’ I was like, ‘OK, if you say so!’”.

“Riley said, ‘Am I going to get canceled for this?’” Bravo recalled.

If you’re at all shying away from what it is, it can look like an apology.”.

The result is the polar opposite of Keough’s more tamped-down performances: Stefani is outrageous, over the line and gut-bustingly funny, even if Keough can sense that some viewers don’t know what do with her.

“You don’t know if the whole thing’s a manipulation, even in her moments of being vulnerable,” Keough said.

“That’s why I love playing these characters that would seem like the bad guy?

It’s so much more fun to make people have moments with those characters where you’re like, ‘I feel bad for her.’ Or, ‘I’m having fun with her?

What followed was “a year of feeling like I was thrown into the ocean and couldn’t swim,” Keough said.

“But there’s this sense of the fragility of life and how every moment matters to me now,” Keough said

It’s her new normal, one she’s still getting used to: Maybe you’re never quite certain where Keough stands because until recently, she hadn’t been all that sure herself