Lily Gladstone

The Form That Was Never Sent

Lily Gladstone had a browser tab open on her computer during the summer of 2020 to sign up for a course on tracking hornets. The lack of steady film work was pushing her toward agriculture and the protection of environmental data. But Martin Scorsese appeared on a video call to offer her the role of Mollie Burkhart in Killers of the Flower Moon. That encounter kept one of the most magnetic presences in American film from retiring too soon.

Growing up on the Blackfeet Reservation in Montana, she learned the value of silence and observation. Her father has Blackfoot roots, and her mother is of European descent. That duality shaped how she understood acting from the time she took part in local theater productions. In 2012, she made her big-screen debut in Jimmy P: Psychotherapy of a Plains Indian (a project that flew under the radar for most audiences).

Auteur cinema already knew who she was.

In 2016, director Kelly Reichardt gave her a supporting role in Certain Women that changed her financial situation. Gladstone played a horse wrangler who quietly falls in love with a lawyer. Her performance was so physical and restrained that critics began following her work obsessively. But the major Los Angeles studios took several more years to call her for big-budget projects.

The weight of a gaze in 2023

The production of Killers of the Flower Moon required an actress who could hold the screen opposite Leonardo DiCaprio and Robert De Niro. Gladstone not only delivered on the assignment but became the moral center of a three-and-a-half-hour story about the extermination of the Osage Nation. In 2023, her face graced the covers of the most important magazines in the international film industry.

And the gamble paid off.

Ahead of the 2024 awards season, she filmed Fancy Dance under the direction of Erica Tremblay. In the film, she plays a woman searching for her missing sister while caring for her niece on an Oklahoma reservation. The script explores the cracks in the U.S. justice system and the vulnerability of Indigenous women. The film premiered at the Sundance Film Festival to unanimous praise from festival programmers.

Because Gladstone prefers characters who carry a heavy cultural legacy over simplistic roles. In 2024, she starred in the series Under the Bridge for Hulu (where she played a police officer investigating a real crime that took place in Canada). The production moved away from the usual tropes of the crime genre to focus on the collective trauma of a small community.

Production and New Technical Horizons

In 2024, her name also began appearing in executive producer credits. Gladstone understands that to change the narratives about Indigenous peoples, she needs control over budgets and casting decisions. So she began developing her own projects that aim to decentralize Hollywood's view of the American West.

She doesn't seek fame simply for being recognized on the street.

During shoots, she often asks for changes to dialogue so it sounds more natural or less literary. In 2024, she agreed to join The Memory Police (an adaptation of the novel by Yoko Ogawa). The film is directed by Reed Morano and written by Charlie Kaufman. Filming was scheduled with an estimated budget of $20 million and a small crew to preserve the intimacy of the scenes.

In January 2024, she became the first American Indian woman to win a Golden Globe for Best Actress in a Drama. The distribution deal for her next film with Apple TV+ included a clause for an exclusive theatrical run of 45 days before moving to the digital catalog.