LILY GLADSTONE

The dynamic star is changing the way Native people are seen onscreen.

- TERESE MARIE MAILHOT

LILY GLADSTONE RECENTLY DEBUTED in Cannes, posing alongside her friend and Killers of the Flower Moon costar, Leonardo DiCaprio, wearing Valentino: a devastatingly beautiful black cashmere cape with abstract floral embellishments that seemed made for her alone. The cape was from Valentino's fall 2022 couture, part of a collection that, per the brand, "broadens the spectrum of beauty" by centering the formerly peripheral, turning "into protagonists those who, once, did not even have supporting roles."

That's Native women in a nutshell, especially in Hollywood. We're rarely portrayed as people with scope or dynamism, but Gladstone, who has Blackfeet (Siksikaitsitapi) and Nez Perce (Nimiipuu) heritage, never makes herself smaller. "I'm not sure I know how to dissolve in the background," she tells me via Zoom, leaning in so close to the screen that it cuts off the top of her head. She's been subverting the lens for years, as in her 2016 performance in Kelly Reichardt's Certain Women, which offers a rare depiction of a queer Native woman. ("I've been really lucky that my career has largely been shaped by women filmmakers," she says.) Now her performance in the Martin Scorsese-helmed Killers could make her the first Native person in history nominated for an Oscar for Best Actress.