Lily Gladstone has left everyone spellbound with her performance in Martin Scorsese’s Killers of the Flower Moon. She has already left a great impression during her Golden Globes acceptance speech and now owns an unprecedented record with her Oscar nomination.
She made history as the first Native American woman to be nominated for an Academy Award for Best Actress for her starring role.
Lily Gladstone Makes History With Best Actress Oscar Nod
The nominations for the upcoming 96th Academy Awards have now been revealed, with Lily Gladstone making history with her nod in the Best Actress category. For her acclaimed performance in Martin Scorsese’s Killers of the Flower Moon, she received her Oscar nomination in the Best Actress category, making history of being the first Native American woman to get an Oscar nod.
Gladstone stars as Mollie Burkhart, wife of Leonardo DiCaprio’s character, Ernest Burkhart. Her character is based on a real-life Osage woman, whose family members are killed over oil reserves rights in the oil-rich Oklahoma region.
The actress, who is of Siksikaitsitapi and Niimiipuu heritage, is the first Native American actress to be nominated for an Oscar. She is the fourth actress of indigenous descent to be nominated for a Best Actress Academy Award.
As per PEOPLE, Merle Oberon was the first woman to get the Best Actress nod in 1935 for playing Kitty Vane in Sidney Franklin’s The Dark Angel. Back in 2003, Keisha Castle-Hughes earned a nomination in the same category for starring as Paikea in Whale Rider. Meanwhile, Yalitza Aparicio, who earned a nomination for her role for Roma (2018) was raised by parents of indigenous descent in Tlaxiaco, Mexico.
Meanwhile, the other contenders nominated in the category are Annette Bening for Nyad, Sandra Hüller for her work in Anatomy of a Fall, Carey Mulligan for Maestro, and Emma Stone for starring in Poor Things.
Lily Gladstone Has Already Made History at the Golden Globes 2024
The 37-year-old actress has recently won a Golden Globe Award for best actress in the motion picture–drama category. She is the first Indigenous woman to win the award. However, her Globes acceptance speech became quite a special moment as she expressed the honor in the Blackfoot language stating,
“This is a historic win; it doesn’t just belong to me. I am holding it right now, I am holding it with all of my beautiful sisters in the film, at this table over here and my mother [in the film] Tantoo Cardinal, standing on all your shoulders.”
Given that her role is quite centric to the story, she was at times seen grieving and suffering on-screen. When asked whether it was distressing to play the character, she told The Guardian,
“Yeah, and sometimes I did need to have time to myself, just in my trailer. But ultimately, there was such a strong Native presence on that set – the cast, the crew, the extras. And when you get a lot of Natives together in any one space, it’s just laughter all the time. So I felt like that was one way I was able to sustain a sense of self and take myself away from this traumatic story for a time.”
The 96th Academy Awards will air live on March 10 from the Dolby Theatre in Hollywood, California, beginning at 7 p.m. ET.
Meanwhile, Killers of the Flower Moon can be streamed on Apple TV+.
