Yahoo Lifestyle 13 Behind-The-Scenes Facts About Lily Gladstone, Now That She's Been Nominated For An Oscar For Her Performance In "Killers Of The Flower Moon"
The 2024 Academy Award nominations were announced earlier this week, and Lily Gladstone received her first nomination ever for her phenomenal performance as Mollie Burkhart in Killers of the Flower Moon.
Fans are absolutely thrilled for her nomination and hoping she goes home with the coveted award.
Over the course of this awards season, Lily has also been nominated for several other awards including a Screen Actors Guild award, a Critics' Choice Award, and a Golden Globe — the latter which she won.
But if you're not super familiar with Lily, or just want to know more about her, here's everything you need to know about her:
1.First, Lily was born on August 2, 1986 and is a Leo.
2.She's originally from Browning, Montana and was raised on the Blackfeet Nation reservation until she was 11 years old. She and her family then moved to a suburban area in Seattle, and Lily recalled it felt like "culture shock."
She recalled her family moving off the reservation "for lack of economic opportunities."
She also explained that while she plays an Osage woman in Killers of the Flower Moon, her "cultural understanding is more shaped by Blackfeet, because that’s the reservation [she] was raised on." She added, “There’s a bit of a pan-cultural understanding that Native people have. But there’s incredible diversity within Indian country.”
3.Their mother worked as an early childhood education specialist, while her father worked in broadcast journalism.
She described her mother as the "bedrock of our family" and added that her father is “one of the most brilliant men I know — a gentle giant. He has deep spirituality and sharp intelligence.”
4.Her father is NiMíiPuu, or Nez Perce, and Siksikaitsitapi, also known as Blackfeet, and her mother is white. On her mother's side, Lily is a descendant of the first cousin of British Prime Minister William Ewart Gladstone, while on her father's side, she is the direct descendant of Blackfeet Chief Red Crow, one of the Great Plains leaders.
Back in 1877, Red Crow entered into a famous treaty with the British monarch. 100 years later, then-Prince Charles visited the reservation on behalf of the crown. “When Prince Charles was given a Blood name, he was given my grandmother’s name,” they explained. “I have mixed feelings about that.”
5.Lily has opened up about using both "she/her" and "they/them" pronouns. “In most Native languages, most Indigenous languages, Blackfeet included, there are no gendered pronouns. There is no he/she, there's only they,” Lily explained. "My pronoun use is partly a way of decolonizing gender for myself."
They also recalled times where her cousins were misgendered. “I remember being 9 years old and just being a little disheartened, seeing how often a lot of my boy cousins were misgendered because they wore their hair long," they said. “It happens to a lot of kids, I think, especially Native boys leaving a community where long hair is celebrated [and then] just kind of getting teased for it. So I remember back then being like, everybody should just be they.”
6.She first saw Star Wars: Episode VI — Return of the Jedi when she was a kid, and her desire to be an Ewok was what made her want to become an actor.
At the Golden Globes, they were seated close to Harrison Ford and told him all about their love for the movie. "I told him that Return of the Jedi was the reason I wanted to act and he said, 'Oh yeah, me too,'" she said.
7.In high school, her yearbook superlative was “Most Likely to Win an Oscar,” and her former classmates are absolutely thrilled for her now that she's been nominated for Best Actress — they're even having an Oscars watch party to celebrate her.
“[My former classmate] told me, ‘I don’t know if you know this, but all of this greatness in your life has brought our whole class back together,’” Lily said. “They’re having an Oscars watch party. They already scheduled it to happen in our old high-school theater, so I’m happy that I didn’t disappoint there.”
8.Lily went on to graduate from the University of Montana in 2008 with a BFA in Acting/Directing and a Native American Studies minor. While she was there, she became interested in Theatre of the Oppressed, which are techniques that use "theatre as a tool for transformation."
Theatre of the Oppressed was created by Brazilian theatre practitioner Augusto Boal in the 1970s. According to the Mandala Center for Change, the techniques are used for "activism, conflict resolution, community building, therapy, and government legislation."
9.They were actually about to quit acting just before they got an email from Martin Scorsese asking to meet with them about KOTFM. “You just wonder if it’s going to be sustainable,” she said. “So I had my credit card out, registering for a data analytics course.”
In 2020, she had planned to apply for seasonal work with the Department of Agriculture tracking murder hornets, but just as she entered her credit card info, she got a Gmail notification alerting her to a Zoom call with Martin Scorsese.
10.Lily arranged to be in Osage County on the Osage reservation when she heard the news of her Academy Award nom. “It just felt like I wanted to be as close to [my character] Mollie as I could be," they explained.
11.In KOTFM, Lily's character grows more sick as she's poisoned over the course of the film. To achieve this, Lily shared that they ended up losing around 30 pounds. They even used the same nutritionist that worked with Matthew McConaughey for Dallas Buyers Club.
"There was something about eating just two cups of vegetables a day for two straight weeks that puts you in a very clear headspace. I was honestly feeling really good while I was playing really sick," she explained.
12.While working on the film Certain Women with Michelle Williams, they bonded over both being from Montana — Lily even realized they were born at the same hospital.
13.Finally, she's also the first Native American to be nominated for Best Actress at the Oscars. “Why am I the first?” she said. “Why did it have to take this long for me to be the first Indigenous North American? Most of the films that show up in these categories are shot on Indigenous land in North America, and it’s taken this long.”
She was also the first Indigenous person to win Best Actress at the Golden Globes. She dedicated her acceptance speech to "every little rez kid, every little urban kid, every little Native kid who has a dream, who is seeing themselves represented and our stories told by ourselves in our own words with tremendous allies and tremendous trust with and from each other."
And if you can't get enough of Lily, watch her in Killers of the Flower Moon, which is currently streaming on Apple TV+.
