In Sofia Coppola’s Priscilla, which premiered this week at the Venice Film Festival, the complicated love story between Priscilla Presley and Elvis takes center stage. Delving into their decade-plus-long romance, brought to life onscreen by Cailee Spaeny and Jacob Elordi, means confronting the fact that Elvis and Priscilla met at a party near a military base when he was 24 and she was 14.

Speaking about the film at a press conference, Presley said that the late rock star “respected” her age and didn’t immediately pursue a physical relationship. “People think, Oh, it was sex…. Not at all,” Presley said. “I never had sex with him. He was very kind, very soft, very loving, but he also respected the fact I was only 14 years old. We were more in mind, in thought, and that was our relationship.”

As recounted in Presley’s own memoir, Elvis and Me, on which the film is based, Elvis was already a megastar when he enlisted in the Army and was stationed in West Germany. While there, he met Priscilla Beaulieu, the 14-year-old daughter of an Air Force officer. “It was very difficult for my parents to understand that Elvis would be so interested in me and why. And I really do think because I was more of a listener,” Presley said at the press conference. “Elvis would pour his heart out to me in every way in Germany: his fears, his hopes, the loss of his mother—which he never ever got over. And I was the person who really, really sat there to listen and to comfort him. That was really our connection.” She added, “Even though I was 14, I was actually a little bit older in life—not in numbers. That was the attraction.”

Presley also spoke about the secretive nature of their romance, which remained largely in the shadows until a 21-year-old Priscilla wed Elvis in Las Vegas on May 1, 1967. “I don’t know why he put so much trust in me, but he did. And I never ever, ever, told anyone that I was seeing him, and that was another issue that he loved, is the fact that I never gave him up in any way,” Presley explained. “I never told anyone at school that I was seeing him. So we built a relationship, and that relationship went on until, yes, I left.”

The Presleys would split in 1972 after welcoming their daughter, Lisa Marie, who died in January at age 54. “It wasn’t because I didn’t love him,” Presley said of their separation. “He was the love of my life. It was the lifestyle that was so difficult for me, and I think any woman can relate to that.”

Unlike Baz Luhrmann’s Elvis, which catapulted Austin Butler to stardom and earned eight Oscar nominations, Priscilla devotes itself entirely to depicting the singer’s former wife’s side of the narrative. “It’s very difficult to sit and watch a film about you, and about your life, and about your love,” Presley said while getting emotional. “I think Sofia did an amazing job. She did her homework. We spoke a couple of times, and I really put everything out for her that I could.”

A24’s Priscilla debuts in theaters on October 27.