Lily Gladstone

Actor / Writer

Birthdate – August 2, 1986 (38 Years Old)

Birthplace – Browning, Montana

Lily Gladstone has emerged as one of the finest, most subtle actors of her generation, quietly building a remarkable filmography since 2012, when she debuted in a supporting role in Arnaud Desplechin’s first film set in the U.S., Jimmy P.: Psychotherapy of a Plains Indian (2013), starring Benicio del Toro, Mathieu Almaric, Gary Farmer, Misty Upham, and A Martinez, and premiering in competition at the Cannes film festival.

Gladstone’s second big-screen role was a supporting turn in Winter in the Blood (2013), based on the best-seller by fellow Blackfeet member James Welch, written and directed by brothers Alex and Andrew J. Smith, and produced by Native American author Sherman Alexie.

Just three years after her film debut, Lily Gladstone won (among several others) the Los Angeles Film Critics Association award for Best Supporting Actress for her powerfully subdued breakthrough performance opposite Kristen Stewart in Kelly Reichardt’s marvelous Certain Women (2016), co-starring Laura Dern, Michelle Williams, James Le Gros, and Jared Harris, premiering at the Sundance film festival and becoming Reichardt’s most profitable movie to date.

Gladstone joined the cast of indie filmmaker Sarah Adina Smith’s surrealist Buster’s Mal Heart (2016), with Rami Malek, DJ Quails, Kate Lyn Sheil, Lin Shaye, and Nicholas Pryor, and premiering at the Toronto Film Festival. Gladstone reunited with the Smith brothers for their adventure drama, Walking Out (2017), which premiered at the Sundance Film Festival and co-starred Matt Bomer, Bill Pullman, Chaske Spencer, and Josh Wiggins.

Gladstone was once again tapped by filmmaker Reichardt for a supporting role in her fine period drama, First Cow (2019), co-starring John Magaro, Orion Lee, Toby Jones, and Gary Farmer, and premiering at the Telluride film festival before winning best film from the New York Film Critics Circle. Lily Gladstone had her first starring role and first screenplay credit in the highly-praised indie film by director/co-writer Morissa Maltz, The Unknown Country (2022), with Raymond Lee and Richard Ray Whitman, which premiered at the South by Southwest Film Festival.

After joining the cast of The Last Manhunt (2022), based on a story derived from true events by Thomas Pa’a Sibbett and cast member Jason Momoa, Gladstone starred in writer-director Erica Tremblay’s acclaimed drama set on the Seneca-Cayuga reservation, Fancy Dance (2023), with a cast including Shea Whigham and Audrey Wasilewski, and premiering at the Sundance film festival. Lily Gladstone was cast in her biggest role to date opposite Leonardo DiCaprio in Martin Scorsese’s epic, Killers of the Flower Moon (2023), with Robert De Niro, premiering at the Cannes Film Festival.

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Personal Details

Lily Gladstone was born in Browning, Montana, and raised on the Blackfeet Nation reservation in Montana by her parents, a mother who was an early childhood education specialist, and a father who was a broadcast journalist. Gladstone has a mixed heritage of the Amskapi Pikuni (Blackfeet), Kainaiwa (Blood), and Nimíipuu (Nez Perce) peoples.

When Gladstone was 11, her family moved to the suburban Seattle neighborhood of Mountlake Terrace, where she graduated from high school. Gladstone attended the University of Montana, where she graduated with a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in 2008 in acting-directing and minored in Native American Studies.

Filmography

Killers of the Flower Moon

Mollie Burkhart (2023)

The Last Manhunt

Maria (2022)

First Cow

(2020)

Walking Out

Lila (2017)

The Unknown Country

Tana (2023)

Fancy Dance

Jax (2024)

Buster’s Mal Heart

Morning Shift Concierge (2017)

Some Facts About Lily Gladstone

AKA: Red Crow Mountain, a peak in the mountain range near Kalispell, Montana, is named for the Amskapi Pikuni (Blackfeet) leader, Red Crow, the great-great-great paternal grandfather of Lily Gladstone. Gladstone’s maternal great-great-grandfather was first cousin to British Prime Minister William Gladstone.

Theater Work: Gladstone works with Red Eagle Soaring, the Native American youth theater program in Seattle, where she developed her acting skills in high school, and where she’s also a member of the touring educational theater group, Living Voices.

Lily Gladstone on her birthplace: Gladstone has noted of Montanans and Montana, where she was born, that “Montanans are infused with landscape. You can sit in a landscape for hours and disappear. You can be part of the quiet. Or you hear the songs of the wind. I remember being hollowed out by the whistle of the wind as a kid. You were at the whim of your landscape and had to live with it.”

Awards

Nominee, Breakthrough Performer, Gotham Awards (2016); Nominee, Independent Spirit Awards (2017); Winner, Best Supporting Actress, Los Angeles Film Critics Association Awards (2016); Nominee, Best Supporting Actress, National Society of Film Critics Awards (2017); Winner, Best Supporting Actress, Village Voice Poll (2016).