She quickly established herself as a front runner in the Best Actress race for the 96th Oscars with her widely acclaimed role in Martin Scorsese’s Western crime film Killers Of The Flower Moon.
But many viewers likely were not familiar with Lily Gladstone prior to her appearance in the critically praised historical epic and her accomplishments as the first Native American woman to be nominated for the Best Actress Oscar and to win a Golden Globe for Best Actress.
The 37-year-old screen star only got her first screen credit in 2012, and she appeared in a string of underseen but well-reviewed films for years before coming to the attention of Scorsese and being paired on screen with superstar Leonardo DiCaprio.
Since scoring a string of award nominations, including the coveted Best Actress nomination for the 2024 Academy Awards, Lily has even become fast friends with her top competitor, Emma Stone, who is nominated in the same category for Yorgos Lanthimos’ science fantasy film Poor Things.
Before audiences find out who will take home the Oscar, DailyMail.com takes a look back at Lily Gladstone’s soaring career in Hollywood.
DailyMail.com looks back on the career of Lily Gladstone, 37, after she became a star of awards season by becoming the first Native American woman to be nominated for a Best Actress Oscar
Gladstone stars in Martin Scorsese’s acclaimed Western crime epic Killers Of The Flower Moon (pictured) with Leonardo DiCaprio and Robert De Niro
She’s competing in the Oscar category with fellow frontrunner Emma Stone, 35, but the two women have become ‘fast friends,’ rather than dueling stars; seen February 24 in LA
Gladstone was born in 1986 in Montana and was raised on the Blackfeet reservation in Browning.
Through her father, she is of Piegan Blackfeet and Nez Perce descent, and through her white mother she is a descendant of a first cousin of the 19th-century British Prime Minister William Ewart Gladstone.
Lily was bit by the acting bug at an early age, and her peers and teachers saw that she had a talent for creating characters.
In an ironic touch, she was named ‘Most likely to win an Oscar’ in her high school yearbook, and the photo of her and a fellow male student went viral as she got close to fulfilling that prediction.
Following a family move to Seattle, Lily moved back to Montana to study and teach acting.
Her first feature film role was in the 2012 American-set French film Jimmy P: Psychotherapy Of A Plains Indian, which was directed by the respected filmmaker Arnaud Desplechin.
Benicio del Toro and Mathieu Amalric headlined the film, which was well reviewed but little seen in the US, while Lily had a small role as a Native woman.
Her profile was raised considerably among critics and arthouse film fans in 2016, when she appeared in Kelly Reichert’s film Certain Women, which featured three stories of independent women out west.
Laura Dern and Michelle Williams starred in the first two, while Gladstone and Kristen Stewart led the final section of the drama.
Gladstone played a Montana ranch hand who becomes almost obsessively infatuated with a lawyer (Stewart) teaching night courses on a subject she has no interest in.
Lily was particularly singled out for praise in the film, which was also seen by few but was one of the best-reviewed films of the year.
Despite the adoration she received for the role, it didn’t immediately lead to higher-profile parts.
She played a smaller role in Reichert’s well-regarded follow-up film, First Cow (2019), and she earned a lead role — and more stellar reviews — for the small independent film The Unknown Country (2022).
But small films like that don’t pay well and only account for a portion of the year, so Gladstone had considered getting a more solid day job beyond acting.
Gladstone is of Blackfeet, Nez Perce and European descent. She was raised in Montana and Washington and wanted to be an actress from a young age; pictured January 14 in Santa Monica
In an ironic touch, she was named ‘Most likely to win an Oscar’ in her high school yearbook, and the photo of her and a fellow male student went viral as she got close to fulfilling that prediction
Her breakout role was in 2016’s Certain Women, in which she played a ranch hand who becomes infatuated with a lawyer (Kristen Stewart), but the film led to few opportunities; seen February 25 in Santa Monica
She revealed to The Hollywood Reporter ahead of Killers Of The Flower Moon’s Cannes Film Festival premiere that she was about to take a job with the Department of Agriculture when she learned that Martin Scorsese wanted her to audition for his upcoming film.
‘I had my credit card out, registering for a data analytics course,’ she admitted.
Gladstone revealed in Interview Magazine that Scorsese first discovered her after seeing her in Certain Women, and she received an email about him wanting to meet with her just before she signed up for her course, which stopped her in her tracks.
And the rest is history.
She stars as Mollie Kyle, an Osage woman living on the Oklahoma reservation when the tribe discovers oil under its seemingly barren land, making the tribe members outrageously wealthy.
But their new fortunes lead the white people surrounding them to launch a campaign to steal it by any means necessary. Some Osage members are forced into discriminatory guardianships in which white stewards only dole out portions of their fortunes while skimming off the top.
Others are wed by the European Americans, only to be murdered by their spouses so that they can inherit their oil rights.
Mollie marries Ernest Burkhart (Leonardo DiCaprio), who is egged on to tie the knot by his uncle, William King Hale (Robert De Niro), who then pushes him to slowly poison her.
Afters years of this reign of death and terror, federal investigators began to investigate the killings, which eventually led to the creation of the modern FBI, though many of the deaths were never solved.
Gladstone has gone on to guest star on acclaimed TV shows including Billions and Reservation Dogs, and she’s set to star in the upcoming film The Memory Police, which is directed by Reed Morano and written by Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind scribe Charlie Kaufman.
Lily was about to apply for a Department of Agriculture job when she was stopped in her tracks by an email saying Martin Scorsese — who saw her in Certain Women — wanted to meet her for his film Killers Of The Flower Moon (pictured)
The star went on to take home the Golden Globe for Best Actress in a Motion Picture, Drama, making her the first Indigenous actor to win the award in the ceremony’s 81-year history; pictured January 7
She was just the second Native woman to ever win an award from the voting body, and she went on to become the first Native American woman nominated for Best Actress at the Oscars, and only the second Indigenous woman ever nominated in the catgory; seen January 7
The actress made history as the first Indigenous woman to win a Best Actress trophy at the Golden Globes earlier this year, and just the second Native woman to ever win an award from the voting body.
‘This is a historic one, and it doesn’t belong to just me,’ Gladstone said in English, after opening her acceptance speech speaking in the Blackfeet language.
The star then noted that, in the past, Hollywood would create fictional Native languages instead of portraying them accurately and authentically
‘I’m so grateful that I can speak even a little bit of my language because in this business, Native actors used to speak their lines in English and then the sound mixers would run them backwards to accomplish Native languages on camera,’ Gladstone explained.
Lily made history again with her Best Actress nomination at the Academy Awards. She was the first Native American woman to be nominated, and only the second Indigenous woman to be nominated, after Yalitza Aparicio, who hails from Mexico, was nominated for Alfonso Cuarón’s 2018 drama Roma.
Emma Stone has emerged as the biggest contender for the prize aside from Lily after she won the BAFTA for Poor Things, but the two aren’t duking it out.
In fact, the leading ladies have become ‘fast friends’ during awards season, according to Gladstone
While speaking with Vanity Fair for its 2024 Hollywood issue, she revealed that Emma had presented her with a gold ring that she called her ‘Infinity Stones ring’ as a present.
‘Then she sent me a picture of her wearing the same one,’ she said. ‘That’s our thing. We call each other Infinity Stones.’
Lily’s biggest Oscars competitor is Emma Stone for Poor Things (pictured), but Lily revealed that they have become ‘fast friends’
Lily told the Washington Post that she gets ‘all these sweet texts’ from Emma and can ‘vent’ to her. To cement their ‘sweet friendship,’ Emma even gave her a matching gold ring
She even went as far as to call Stone her ‘sister in all this’ while speaking with the Washington Post.
‘I’m getting all these sweet texts from her. Or we’re needing to vent about stuff. It’s a very sweet friendship,’ she gushed.
If Lily ends up making more history and appears on the Oscars stage this weekend, Emma will surely be on her feet cheering her on.
The 96th Oscars will be broadcast on Sunday, March 10, at 7 p.m ET/4 p.m. PT on ABC, as well as on streaming services including Hulu Live TV, YouTubeTV, AT&T TV and FuboTV.
