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Priscilla Presley is reflecting on daughter Lisa Marie Presley’s whirlwind romance with Nicolas Cage.
In Priscilla’s memoir Softly As I Leave You: Life After Elvis, which hit stands on Tuesday, Sept. 23, Priscilla, 80, said that her daughter “focused on raising her children” after her “disastrous marriage” to Michael Jackson. However, when she met Cage in 2000, that changed.
“I liked Nicolas Cage from the beginning. Despite his stormy temper (which my daughter shared), he has a good heart and a great capacity for love,” Priscilla, 80, wrote.
When Cage, 61, and Lisa Marie — who died in 2023 at age 54 — first met, they were both in relationships with other people. Lisa Marie was engaged to musician John Oszajca and Cage was married to Patricia Arquette. But, after their first encounter, they soon left “their exes in the dust,” Priscilla wrote.
Though the pair had great chemistry and passion for one another, Priscilla said their relationship quickly turned into a rollercoaster.
“They screamed and yelled, they threw things, and sometimes they broke things. They broke up. And the next day, or pretty close to it, they made up,” she wrote. “Lisa and Nic broke up and made up so many times, it was dizzying.”
She added, “When it was good, it was very, very good. And when it was bad, it was horrid.”
Cage and Lisa Marie got married in Hawaii on Aug. 10, 2002 — and Priscilla wrote that though she had “little hope” the marriage would last, she did her “best to be optimistic.”
The actor ended up filing for divorce three months later and Priscilla said that the split was “tumultuous and hard” on both of them — but they were “better off as friends.”
A rep for Cage did not respond to PEOPLE’s request for comment.
Grand Central Publishing
After Lisa Marie died of a small bowel obstruction on Jan. 12, 2023, Cage said in a statement obtained by The Hollywood Reporter that the loss of his ex-wife is “devastating news.”
“Lisa had the greatest laugh of anyone I ever met. She lit up every room, and I am heartbroken,” the actor added.
In an interview with Barbara Walters in March 2003, Cage said there was a “sense, a logic” to marrying her, given they both came from famous and artistic families. (Cage was born Nicolas Kim Coppola, the nephew of Francis Ford Coppola.)
“Oftentimes when you have two people who are very strong and their own personalities, and rather intense, sometimes you can have a hard time meshing,” he said at the time. “We got into this unfortunate pattern of breaking up and getting back together again.”
Softly, As I Leave You: Life After Elvis was released on Sept. 23.
