NEED TO KNOW
- Priscilla Presley revealed in her new memoir Softly As I Leave You: Life After Elvis that her daughter Lisa Marie’s then-fiancé Nicolas Cage threw her engagement ring out of a boat after they got into a fight
- She noted that the actor sent out divers to search for the ring and they came up empty, so he opted to buy Lisa Marie a new one with “an even bigger diamond”
- Priscilla noted that the couple had a tumultuous relationship during the early 2000s and “broke up and made up so many times, it was dizzying”
Lisa Marie Presley’s first engagement ring from Nicolas Cage ended up at the bottom of the sea.
Priscilla Presley, 80, revealed the details of the incident in her new memoir Softly As I Leave You: Life After Elvis. In the book, she opened up about the couple’s tumultuous on-and-off relationship in the early 2000s and the event that almost broke their engagement.
In her memoir, Priscilla recalled that Cage, 61, proposed to her daughter with “a six-carat, $65,000 diamond ring,” and noted that “it was stunning, but it didn’t last long,” according to InStyle.
“One afternoon, they went sailing off the coast of Catalina Island on Nick’s yacht, the Weston. Something set off another of their epic fights, and Lisa pulled off her engagement ring and threw it at Nick,” Priscilla shared, per the outlet. “Furious, Nick threw the ring overboard.”
She said that the Gunslingers star regretted what he had done and attempted to locate the engagement ring by hiring divers to search the area where it fell into the sea. However, the crew was unable to find it.
“As far as I know, the ring is still there,” Priscilla shared of the ring, per InStyle.
L. Busacca/WireImage
“So what did Nicolas do?” she continued. “Two days later, he bought Lisa an even bigger diamond (ten carats), and they got engaged all over again.”
She noted in her memoir that while the two had great chemistry, their passion often got the better of them and they would find themselves in explosive arguments with each other.
SGranitz/WireImage
“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.”
“When it was good, it was very, very good. And when it was bad, it was horrid,” she added.
Reps for Nicolas Cage did not respond to PEOPLE’s request for comment earlier this week.
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However, Cage and Lisa Marie did make it down the aisle. They wed 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 Face/Off actor ended up filing for divorce three months later, and Priscilla explained in her memoir that the split was “tumultuous and hard” on both of them — but they were “better off as friends.”
Cage went on to marry Alice Kim in July 2004 — just two months after he finalized his divorce from Lisa Marie. He and Kim divorced in 2016. Four years later, he met his current wife, Riko Shibata, whom he wed in 2021.
As for Lisa Marie, the “Lights Out” musician, who had previously been married to and divorced from musicians Danny Keough and Michael Jackson before marrying Cage, went on to marry Michael Lockwood. However, the pair separated and their divorce was finalized in May 2021. Lisa Marie died of a small bowel obstruction in 2023 at 54.
Softly, As I Leave You: Life After Elvis was released on Sept. 23.
