Lily Gladstone in 2024: Personal Life, Career, Pronouns, and Awards

One of the most critically acclaimed stars in 2023, Lily Gladstone stands as a pillar of inspiration by becoming the first-ever Native American to receive a Best Actress Oscars nomination for Killers of the Flower Moon. Starring as Mollie Burkhart and opposite Leonardo DiCaprio in the Martin Scorcese directorial, her poignant depth of acting and her emotional prowess struck a resounding chord with filmgoers ever. Moreover, the actress of Blackfeet ancestry also boasts of having a stellar career record in the movies, in a show of her strengths.

As she gears up to make history with a possible win in her very first Academy Awards nomination, her tale of struggles and rise to stardom calls for attentive recognition.

Early life, personal background, and cultural heritage of Lily Gladstone

Lily Gladstone was born on August 2, 1986, in Kalispell, Montana, and raised on the Blackfeet Reservation in Browning, where she attended elementary school and learned and embraced her cultural identity and history. Born to a European mother and a Native American father, she counts her ancestry and heritage as that of Piegan Blackfeet (Siksikaitsitapi), Nez Perce (Nimíipuu), and European. Additionally, she also happens to have descended from the first cousin of British Prime Minister William Ewart Gladstone.

On one end, when her maternal roots had her from a lineage of the leader who opposed Imperialism and supported the Irish Home Rule, one of her paternal great-great-grandfathers happened to be the Kainai Nation chief Mi'k ai'stoowa aka Red Crow. The chieftain led the confederacy of the Blackfeet people and signed Treaty 7 with the Canadian government in 1877 while also resisting the assimilation policies of the Indian Act.

Education and early acting career

Lily Gladstone graduated from Mountlake Terrace High School in 2004, but not before participating in drama clubs and performing in plays like The Crucible and The Laramie Project. However, she maintained an active interest in academics while attending the University of Montana in Missoula, with a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Acting/Directing degree and a minor in Native American Studies in 2008. Moreover, she also attended schools in London, where she performed at the Globe Theatre.

Gladstone’s tryst with acting came at the age of five while watching Star Wars: Return of the Jedi, awestruck by the character of Princess Leia. Moving ahead, she involved herself with the Stone Soup Theatre in Seattle during middle school, appearing in a host of student films and theses. Finally, her stints at summer camps at the Seattle Children’s Theatre and the Seattle Repertory Theatre also enhanced her resume.

Personal life and advocacy for identity

Lily Gladstone stands by her heritage and has, at many times, resonated with the importance of identifying oneself as willed. An advocate of the LGBTQ+ community, she goes by both she/them pronouns, while also stating her identity as “middle-gendered”. However, her pronouns also reflect her Blackfeet origins as in most Native languages, gendered pronouns do not exist and thus, the non-binary stance reflects her “partly a way of decolonizing gender for myself” - an insight that she shared at the Variety Breakthrough of the Year Awards in 2023 while receiving the Breakthrough Actor award.

Early career and breakthrough role for Lily Gladstone

After her parallel interest in academics and acting, the Oscar-nominated actress went on to amass acclaim while starring in several independent movies and television shows. Lily Gladstone marked her television debut with 2012’s Jimmy P: Psychotherapy of a Plains Indian. Playing the role of a nurse named Gayle, the drama, based on an actual record of a Blackfoot veteran undergoing psychoanalysis during World War II, earned widespread recognition and lifted her to the limelight.

In another project in the same year, she acted in an adaptation of James Welch’s novel about a Native American man’s quest for identity and redemption, titled Winter in the Blood. However, the breakthrough role for Lily Gladstone came in the form of 2016’s Certain Women, directed by Kelly Reichardt. Essaying the role of a rancher named Jamie, developing a friendship with a night school teacher, the film went ahead as a standout success, earning several laurels.

In return, the actress received the Los Angeles Film Critics Association and the Boston Society of Film Critics Awards for Best Supporting Actress as well as nominations for the Independent Spirit Award for Best Supporting Female and the Gotham Independent Film Award for Breakthrough Actor. In 2016, she played the role of Brown, a fugitive suffering from hallucinations in the thriller Buster’s Mal Heart, and also hosted a series on film production on the YouTube channel Crash Course in 2017.

Killers of the Flower Moon, Oscar, and the road ahead for Lily Gladstone

Lily Gladstone debuted her arguably most resounding performance yet with 2023’s Killers of the Flower Moon, earning her the honor of becoming the first Native American Best Actress Oscar nominee and the first Indigenous actor to win the Screen Actors Guild Award for Best Female Actor. In the celebrated Martin Scorcese flick, she played the role of Mollie Burkhart based on the true story of the 1920 Osage murders after the discovery of oil on their land.

Representing the voice of all Native Americans, her role earned her widespread acclaim, recognition, and awards, including the 2024 Golden Globes and the Satellite Awards for Best Actress. Furthermore, she also received compliments and wishes from industry leaders such as Emma Stone and various organizations.

In the same year, she also starred in a musical comedy by Taika Waititi, Fancy Dance, playing the role of Nora, a Native American dancer in a Broadway show. As for the future, she has received a place in the cast of a dystopian thriller, The Memory Police, and remains set to star in Jazzy, a biopic on the civil rights activist Nina Simone, where the actress will fill her shoes. In the meantime, she stands firmly on course with an evening bag packed with her lucky charms en route to the 96th Academy Awards on March 10, 2024.