When Lily Gladstone received an Oscar nomination her performance in Killers of the Flower Moon — her first Oscar nomination — she called the recognition an "unparalleled honor." She added, "It has been a great blessing in and of itself to be a working actor at all."
Gladstone's road to this moment has been decades in the making. The actor, who is of Siksikaitsitapi and NiMíiPuu heritage, grew up on the Blackfeet Reservation in northwestern Montana and fell in love with acting through the Missoula Children's Theatre. She affectionately recalls the commitment her parents had to fostering her desire to perform.
"They'd drive me two hours every weekend, 160 to 180 miles round-trip, just to take ballet lessons," she shares. "We'd get our grocery shopping trip and visit a cousin, but they made sure that I made it to my ballet lessons. That was our weekly routine. Both of my parents have been so committed my whole life to my love of performance."
During her senior year of high school in 2004, Gladstone was voted "Most Likely to Win an Oscar." She graduated from the University of Montana with a major in Acting and Directing and a minor in Native American Studies. Following a standout turn in Kelly Reichardt's Certain Women, Gladstone reunited with the filmmaker for 2019's First Cow. But when the pandemic hit and she could not perform on screen or stage, Gladstone found herself on the verge of enrolling in a data analytics course.
And then Scorsese called.
Martin Scorsese cast Gladstone opposite Leonardo DiCaprio in his sweeping crime epic, Killers of the Flower Moon. She stars as Mollie Burkhart, the Osage woman who is married to one of the perpetrators of the Osage Murders. At the 96th Oscars, Gladstone is nominated for Best Actress in a Leading Role.
"I feel like this film is going to really stand the test of time, and it's just fantastic that it reached audiences in such a meaningful way that people were moved by it," she says. "That's what this nomination feels like: It feels like I know there's going to be a legacy with it."
Below, Gladstone shares with A.frame the films that had the biggest influence on her. "I was a very comedy-driven kid," she adds of her selections. "That's always where I thought this was leading!"
Written and Directed by: Niki Caro
Whale Rider came out my junior year of high school, and I remember seeing that film and having my mind blown open by the possibility of narrative. This whole film is centered around this young woman, and this young woman is at a point in time with her culture where girls are stepping into a different role, and it shows that the necessity for cultural perseverance is really led by young women. For me, it was just the perfect film to watch.
As a teenage Indigenous girl, I was just developing my love of film. So, when Keisha Castle-Hughes was nominated [for the Oscar] and nominated for Leading Actress — I know there were conversations about her being supporting, which is insane to me if you know that film — but I just remember what it felt like for me, that halfway across the world there was this girl who was really gifted and brought so much vulnerability and truth to the screen in a way that I could access it. And even though she was from New Zealand, and she's Māori, I still felt like I was watching my home. I understood everything in that film so deeply.
Directed by: Spike Jonze | Written by: Charlie Kaufman
Adaptation is a masterclass in writing, directing and acting. The humor in that film, and the way it's so deeply enmeshed with how finely developed all the characters are, and every single actor and every character that they create — it's all stunning. The performance that Nicolas Cage gives playing these two brothers is so funny. But comedy is so rooted in timing, and he's playing off of himself, so how do you do that as one person? It's Spike Jonze's filmmaking at its best, but that's also Charlie Kaufman being one of my absolute favorite screenwriters of all time.
That script takes such a self-aware look at the writer's process and what the industry does to writers who just want to be creative. It really gets me what Charlie Kaufman was getting at with, 'Why don't people just want a film about flowers?' I remember thinking, 'Yeah! I want to find a film that's just about flowers. Why isn't anybody making those movies?' So, Adaptation just cracks the code for me on what's possible with filmmaking, because it maintains and holds so much humor and so much meta analysis, but it's done in a very light way. It doesn't take itself too seriously. It's so stimulating. I can't say enough about that movie.
Directed by: Kelly Reichardt | Written by: Jonathan Raymond and Kelly Reichardt
I had just graduated and done my first independent film, Winter in the Blood. And I was about to do a student feature and was asking the director for a piece that I could watch for tone, because she wrote a very minimalist movie, and she sent me Wendy and Lucy. I felt like, 'Oh, there it is. There's the film that's just about flowers. This is a simple tale about a woman and her dog. It's not completely dressed up. The camera's just letting you watch this.' That got me into all of Kelly's other films.
Of course, when the audition came in for Certain Women, I was beyond excited. I got to meet Lucy just months before she died, because Kelly brought her to the last few days of Certain Women.
Written and Directed by: Paul Thomas Anderson
PTA is probably my favorite filmmaker. One of the first films that I watched when I was developing a taste in movies was Magnolia, and that got me addicted to him as a filmmaker. Then I saw The Master, and I feel like there are huge conversations being had in that film that I really value. He's talking about this pull between nature and control, and you could very easily try and codify it and say it's an indictment of Scientology, but it's not. It is, and it's not. It lives in its own world.
It's such a visceral film. The performances in it are unapologetic. They're relentless. Philip Seymour Hoffman is my favorite actor. Over COVID, a friend of mine said, 'Choose a monologue that plays against type that you are typically cast in.' I chose the final monologue from The Master that Philip Seymour Hoffman delivers to Joaquin Phoenix to try to hold onto him and continue to control him. We were asked to give a description of why we were drawn to that and my quote was, 'In honor of those who love wrestling those who lord.' For me, that was the whole film and that was Philip Seymour Hoffman. Every character that he played felt like it had some element of that. He was such a compassionate soul. You could see it in every performance that he gave, and you could also see his bravery in bringing out these dark elements of humanity and putting them on display where we could all see them and get to know these monsters.
Written and Directed by: Taika Waititi
Can I say that it's a tie? Eagle vs Shark is such a perfect, textured indie comedy that is very character-driven. It was one of the first times that I ever saw Indigenous characters just allowed to be characters, allowed to be funny, allowed to have this cute, little crunchy love story, allowed to be nerds, allowed to just be. They didn't have to contextualize or justify why these characters are Indigenous; they just are. It was exactly the kind of film that I loved watching — the animation, the score, the indie feel of it. I just worshiped Jemaine Clement, and I miss the Taika Waititi-Jemaine Clement early days.
Directed by: Mel Brooks | Written by: Mel Brooks, Norman Steinberg, Andrew Bergman, Richard Pryor, and Alan Uger
The other one is Blazing Saddles, which I probably watched more than any other movie in my childhood. I think before I even realized it, Blazing Saddles defined the Western for me, and I love that it was a satire of the Western and that it was done in such a diverse way. It was having conversations nobody was having, but in a way that was so accessible because it was so funny! It was just a perfect little indictment of Americana.
I love Madeline Khan's performance in that. I remember being five years old and not fully understanding what I was actually watching but memorizing Lili Von Shtupp's whole song and her burlesque number, and I loved performing that when I was a kid. It's the kind of film you watch again when you grow up and you're like, 'Oh, nobody would be able to get away with making this movie today!' But God, it holds up!
I remember being a kid — and a lot of other Natives I've talked to who loved this movie felt the same way when they were kids — and you thought Mel Brooks was a Native guy. When Bart pulls up in his own little segregated wagon circle and the Indians are speaking Yiddish, my little brain was like, 'Oh, of course!' Even though it was technically redface, it's like this shared history that Black and Indigenous people have with Westward Expansion and this shared acknowledgement and humor. I loved that. We're at a point where we're seeing Westerns crop up again and we're seeing people wanting to be this John Wayne cowboy. And I don't know if the idolization of these characters ever went away, but Blazing Saddles just deconstructs all of that in such a delightful way.
