Lily Gladstone Biography

Lily Gladstone made history in 2024 when she became the first Native American women to be nominated for a Best Actress Oscar, for her role opposite Leonardo DiCaprio in Martin Scorsese's crime drama Killers of the Flower Moon (2003). Ironically, two decades earlier, her high school class voted her "Most Likely to Win an Oscar."

Lily, who is of Blackfeet and Nez Perce heritage on her father's side and White on her mother's side, was born in Browning, Montana and grew up on the Blackfeet Indian Reservation in rural Montana. When she was 11, her family moved to Seattle, where she took ballet lessons and began acting in plays.

Her first professional job came at age 12 in a tiny indie film called Here Come the Disco Boys because of her ability to cry on cue at the audition. Lily returned to Montana to attend the University of Montana, graduating with a BFA in Acting and Directing and afterwards began landing roles in films such as Winter in the Blood (2013) and Subterranea (2015).

Other film roles followed, but she was largely unknown before getting her breakthrough role in Killers of the Flower Moon (2003), which is based on a true story. For her role as Osage woman Mollie Kyle in the film, in addition to her first Academy Award nomination, she won a 2024 Golden Globe for Best Performance by a Female Actor in a Motion Picture, Drama, as well as awards from a number of Film Festivals and Film Critic societies.

Lily has also had success on stage appearing in productions with the Oregon Shakespeare Festival and the Yale Repertory Theatre.

Photo by Cabot McNenly.

Filmography:

Killers of the Flower Moon (2023)
Fancy Dance (2023)
The Last Manhunt (2022)
Quantum Cowboys (2022)
The Unknown Country (2022)
Two Eyes (2020)
Freeland (2020)
First Cow (2019)
The Thin Line (2017)
Walking Out (2017)
Buster's Mal Heart (2016)
Certain Women (2016)
Subterranea (2015)
Winter in the Blood (2013)
Jimmy P: Psychotherapy of a Plains Indian (2013)