Killers of the Flower Moon Star Lily Gladstone Makes History as First Native American Best Actress Oscar Nominee

Lily Gladstone is making history!

On Tuesday, the Killers of the Flower Moon star, 37, was nominated for Best Actress at this year's Oscars for her performance as Mollie Burkhart in the Martin Scorsese film that also stars Leonardo DiCaprio, Robert De Niro and Jesse Plemons.

Gladstone, who is of Siksikaitsitapi and Niimiipuu heritage, is the first Native American actress to be nominated for an Oscar. She's the fourth Indigenous actress to ever earn a nomination in the category.

Merle Oberon was the first woman nominated in the category in 1935 for playing Kitty Vane in Sidney Franklin's The Dark Angel. More than 60 years later, in 2003, Keisha Castle-Hughes was nominated for playing Paikea, a young girl fighting for the respect of her family in Whale Rider.

The last Indigenous woman to be nominated in the category before Gladstone was Yalitza Aparicio for her role in 2018's Roma. Aparicio played Cleo, a maid living in Mexico City in the 1970s.

Per Variety, Oberon, Castle-Hughes and Aparicio are British, Kiwi and Mexican, respectively.

Gladstone recently became the first Indigenous woman to win the Golden Globe for best actress in a motion picture - drama category.

The character of Mollie Burkhart is based on a real-life woman who was a member of the Osage Nation. Mollie's family members, including her mother and sisters, were killed by men over their rights to oil reserves located underneath their reservation in Oklahoma. The movie can be streamed on Apple TV+.

In her Globes acceptance speech, Gladstone spoke briefly in the Blackfeet language (an Algonquian language spoken by the Blackfoot or Niitsitapi people) and noted in English, "This [win] is a historic one. It doesn't belong to just me. I'm holding it right now. I'm holding it with all my beautiful sisters in the film at this table over here and my mother, Tantoo Cardinal, standing on all of your shoulders. Thank you."

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In October 2023 ahead of the film's premiere, Gladstone told The Hollywood Reporter that she considered quitting acting before she got cast in Killers of the Flower Moon.

“I had my credit card out, registering for a data analytics course," she said, adding that she worried an acting career wouldn't be sustainable for her. She was applying for seasonal work at the Department of Agriculture when she got an email from Scorsese about the role.

The 96th Academy Awards, hosted by Jimmy Kimmel, will air live on Sunday, March 10, from the Dolby Theatre in Hollywood, California, beginning at 7 p.m. ET.