Actress and businesswoman Presley, 78, said at the world premiere of Priscilla that, “Elvis was the great love of my life,” before beginning to break down in tears.
“I left him not because I didn’t love him but because I no longer shared that lifestyle, but it was as if we had never left each other.
“And I always made sure he could see his daughter,” she said of singer-songwriter Lisa Marie Presley, who died in January of cardiac arrest aged 54.
Priscilla, based on Presley’s memoirs, is in competition at Venice Film Festival.
Priscilla was 14 when she met 24-year-old Elvis while he was doing military service in Germany in 1959, and they moved in together at Graceland five years later, in 1963.
They married in 1967 and had Lisa Marie a year later.
The couple split up in 1972 as the singing great’s drug use spiralled out of control.
Elvis died of a heart attack on August 16, 1977, aged 42.
ANSA
