Riley Keough wins IMDb STARmeter Award, talks Sasquatch sex scenes and dream tour with Stevie Nicks

Riley Keough is a star — and now she has an IMDb award to prove it. 

The actress, who was recently nominated for both an Emmy and a Golden Globe for her rock-star role in the series Daisy Jones & the Six, received the IMDb “Fan Favorite” STARmeter Award while at the 2024 Sundance Film Festival on Friday. 

“Thank you to the fans for making me a fan favorite, and thank you to the STARmeter for existing so I could have this award,” Keough said in her acceptance video. “It is very special because IMDb is… I mean, as far back as I can remember, everyone checks IMDb. And it's very important when you’re a young actor. I don’t know, it’s just such a part of the culture. So it's very special!”

IMDb’s STARmeter Awards honor celebrities who have trended high on the IMDbPro STARmeter chart, with its rankings determined by the actual page views of the more than 200 million fans who visit IMDb every month.

Keough was consistently high on this year’s list and was recently ranked the 38th-most popular star of 2023. She joins a coveted list of STARmeter winners, including Jennifer Connelly, Rachel Brosnahan, Nicholas Braun, Mindy Kaling, Bill Skarsgård, and Peter Dinklage.

While accepting the award, Keough reflected on the "really big challenge" she and her costars-turned-bandmates faced bringing their Daisy Jones & the Six characters to life on screen. 

“I had to acquire a lot of skills,” she said. “And I think that the fact that I was able to play music and sing and go up on stage and feel confident about this thing that I’d never done before, and that I could get to that point, was really special for me. I feel proud of the fact that we were able to perform live together.”

When asked with whom she'd like the rock band to tour, Keough immediately had an idea. “We could open for Stevie Nicks. That would be cool,” she said, referencing the legendary Fleetwood Mac singer, who previously expressed her appreciation for the series. “I might ask her!”

For now, though, Keough is putting the music on pause to focus on her upcoming turn as a bigfoot opposite Jesse Eisenberg in the Zellner Brothers film Sasquatch Sunset, which debuted at the Sundance Film Festival on Friday. 

"It’s beautifully shot, very funny, and really touching, actually, and one of my favorite experiences I’ve had filming anything,” she said at a Q&A after the screening for the project, about a family of Sasquatch. “And there’s no speaking in the movie. It was a whole different type of acting. It was creature work, which I had never done before.”

Keough explained that she and her Sasquatch clan didn’t have much time to get used to their costumes before filming. “And they were really hard to move in,” she said. “Jesse and I complained the whole time.”

“What you feel like you're doing with the mask on isn't what it looks like,” Keough added. “So we did spend time looking at ourselves in the mirror and, I guess, practicing our Sasquatch faces.”

When asked about her Sasquatch sex scene with her costar and co-director Nathan Zellner, Keough jokingly told the audience that she was “so excited” to talk about it. “It was very silly, but we actually rehearsed our sex scenes, and I have it on video.”

Additional reporting by Gerrad Hall.

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