2024 Oscars Highlights: Oppenheimer wins Best Picture

Gladstone played a wealthy Osage woman whose family becomes the target of a deadly plot by white men to steal their oil rights. The actress quickly received accolades after Martin Scorsese's three-and-a-half-hour historical epic premiered at the Cannes Film Festival last May.

“You are the soul of 'Killers of the Flower Moon,'” actress Jennifer Lawrence said while introducing Gladstone as a nominee on Sunday.

Earlier this year, Gladstone, who has Blackfeet and Nez Percé heritage, became the first Indigenous person to win a Golden Globe for best actress, using her moment on stage to share a snippet of Blackfeet language and remind the industry how far Hollywood has come. In the representation of Native Americans on screen.

“In this work, the original actors would speak their lines in English and then the sound mixers would play them backwards to create the original languages ​​on camera.” He said Gladstone, 37, who also received Best Actress awards from the Screen Actors Guild and New York Film Critics Circle.

Other Indigenous artists have won Oscars. Popular singer Buffy Sainte-Marie is the first to take home Best Original Song for “Up Where We Belong” from the 1983 film An Officer and a Gentleman (although her Native Canadian heritage has recently been disputed), and Taika Waititi, who Of Maori descent, he won best adapted screenplay for “Jojo Rabbit” (2019). In the Best Actress category, Indigenous performers such as Keisha Castle-Hughes (“Whale Rider,” 2003) and Yalitza Aparicio (“Roma,” 2018) competed for the honor. But among Native Americans, Gladstone is the first to be nominated for this competitive award. (Wes Studi, a Cherokee American, received an honorary Academy Award in 2019.)

“There are a few people who love movies and have known about my career for a while, but this was like being shot out of a cannon,” Gladstone told The New York Times in a profile earlier this year.

Portraying Molly Burkhart, a real-life person who survived a reign of terror against the Osage Nation in Oklahoma in the 1920s, Gladstone brought to life the complexities of a woman who was captivated by the romantic interest of a hotheaded white interloper — played by Leonardo. DiCaprio – and he strongly doubts it. With a performance that can be emotionally reserved yet infuriating, Gladstone became the breakout star in a cast that included two longtime Hollywood A-listers, DiCaprio and Robert De Niro.

Gladstone did not follow the typical path of an actor. Instead of moving to Los Angeles or New York to audition in her 20s, she stayed in Montana, touring schools with a one-woman show about the Native American boarding school system and building relationships with local filmmakers. Her career breakthrough came in the film “Certain Women” in 2016.

With Killers of the Flower Moon, Gladstone's talents received the heft of a big-budget film. She learned to speak Osage with a language teacher and dialect coach, and consulted with Margie Burkhart, her character's granddaughter, about her ancestral relationship. After Scorsese met in Oklahoma with descendants of the victims, the director worked to deepen the roles of the Osage characters in the script, giving Gladstone access to experts who could advise her on aspects of her performance.

While making the media rounds, Gladstone has spoken about the challenges in an industry with few opportunities for indigenous actors. newly Stady It found that among roles in 1,600 films released from 2007 to 2022, the proportion of speaking parts by original actors was less than a quarter of 1 percent.

“If you had kicked in the door,” Gladstone said He said in an interview With the New Yorker, “I just try to stand here and leave it open to everyone.”