- Ben Smith-Petersen is an Australian stuntman and actor.
- He’s married to actress Riley Keough.
- He has a daughter with Riley.
- He attended the funeral for Riley’s mother, Lisa Marie Presley.
Ben Smith-Petersen is a loving husband to Riley Keough, especially in the wake of tragedy. Ben supported the American Honey actress, 31, at her mother Lisa Marie Presley‘s funeral service at Graceland in Memphis, Tennessee on January 22. He read a letter written by Riley as a tribute for her mother and revealed the couple secretly welcomed a daughter together. “Thank you for showing me that love is the most important things in this life. I hope I can love my daughter the way you loved me,” Ben read at the service.
Riley is leaning on her husband as she grapples with the loss of her mother. So who is Ben Smith-Petersen? Here is everything you need to know about him.
Ben is Australian.
Ben was born and raised in Australia, which is where he met Riley. “Falling in love in Australia was amazing. He started taking me all around Sydney to these little places he loved,” Riley recalled in a 2022 essay for Vogue Australia. She also revealed that they got matching tattoos in Australia the third day they hung out.
He works as a stuntman.
Ben has been working as a stuntman on movies since at least 2011. Some of the films he’s worked on include The Hunger Games: Catching Fire, Mad Max: Fury Road, Suicide Squad, Peter Rabbit, Triple Frontier, and The Suicide Squad, according to his IMDb. He also did stunts for the upcoming Mad Max prequel starring Chris Hemsworth.
He’s also an actor.
As an actor, Ben worked with Riley on the 2014 short film Spark and Light. He’ll be featured in the upcoming horror film The Dead Thing and the upcoming TV comedy series Rock Me, per his IMDb.
He met Riley on a movie set.
Ben and Riley met in Australia while doing re-shoots on Mad Max: Fury Road in 2013. Ben was working as a stuntman and Riley was in the cast. The first time they hung out outside of work was at Riley’s friend’s house in Sydney. “We had a couple of drinks and I remember we had a connection,” Riley said in the Vogue Australia essay, adding that they salsa danced together and shared their first kiss by the end of the night. Ben and Riley announced their engagement in August 2014.
Ben married Riley in Napa Valley.
Ben and Riley tied the knot in Napa, California on February 4, 2015. But that wasn’t the couple’s only wedding! “Technically, our first wedding was in Nepal, because we were there building a school a couple of weeks before we got married,” Riley revealed via Vogue Australia. “The families knew we were getting married and they said, ‘Let us throw you a Hindu wedding.’ It was so beautiful and, in some ways, that wedding was a little more intimate and really special,” Riley also said. “That wedding, I cried. At my bigger wedding I was a little nervous, I wasn’t as present. But it was still equally as amazing.”
Riley also praised Ben in the Vogue Australia essay, saying, “My husband is such a good person. He’s calm and loyal and strong and sensitive. He’s my best friend.”