For ‘Under the Bridge,’ Lily Gladstone Shares the Screen With Real-Life Pal Riley Keough
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1986-present
Latest News: Lily Gladstone Is Back for Hulu’s Under the Bridge
Actors Lily Gladstone and Riley Keough were both widely celebrated in 2023 for their standout performances in Killers of the Flower Moon and Daisy Jones & The Six, respectively. Together, the two actors now star in Under the Bridge, a Hulu true-crime series released April 17. Gladstone plays fictional police officer Cam Bentland in the dramatized account of the 1997 murder of Canadian teenager Reena Virk, with Keough portraying real-life journalist Rebecca Godfrey.
As it turns out, 37-year-old Gladstone and 34-year-old Keough aren’t just coworkers—they’ve known each other for years. Gladstone explained to The Hollywood Reporter that Keough began following her on social media in 2017, messaging her about casting recommendations and “random things.” The connection helped lead to their collaboration for the limited series, for which Keough also served as an executive producer.
“We just had a professional knowledge and respect of each other,” Gladstone said. “We were struggling earlier today to remember the moment we met in person because neither of us remember it, we just kind of feel like we’ve always known each other.”
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Who Is Lily Gladstone?
Lily Gladstone is an American actor of Blackfeet and Nimíipuu heritage. She is best known for her appearance in the 2023 Martin Scorsese movie Killers of the Flower Moon, in which she played an Osage woman living on an Oklahoma reservation during an actual series of murders in the 1920s. The performance has been described as Gladstone’s mainstream breakout role, leading to her first Oscar nomination and Golden Globe win. Before this role, Gladstone appeared in several independent movies and television shows, including Reservation Dogs. She drew particular praise for her performance in 2016’s Certain Women, which earned her an Independent Spirit Award nomination for Best Supporting Female and other accolades.
Quick Facts
FULL NAME: Lily Gladstone
BORN: August 2, 1986
BIRTHPLACE: Kalispell, Montana
ASTROLOGICAL SIGN: Leo
Early Life
Lily Gladstone was born on August 2, 1986, and raised in Browning, Montana. Her father, who worked in broadcast journalism, is of Blackfeet and Nimíipuu descent, while her mother, an early childhood education specialist, is white. Gladstone lived on the reservation of the Blackfeet Nation until she was 11. For the first years of her life, the family had a log cabin with a wood-burning stove.
In describing Browning, Gladstone said: “There is poverty, violence, substance abuse, and unemployment everywhere. But there is so much love in that community. What unites people there is a love of family, a love of land.”
Gladstone said she was “an energetic and performative kid who got made fun of a lot—just that chubby mixed girl on the rez who had a little bit too much creative energy and not enough outlets.” Her father and grandfather were big movie buffs, and growing up, she watched many movies on cable television that they had recorded.
After her family moved away from Browning due to a lack of economic opportunities, she graduated high school in a suburb of Seattle and then attended the University of Montana. She studied acting and theater, graduating in 2008 with a bachelor’s degree in fine arts and a minor in Native American Studies. While in college, she performed in Montana Repertory Theatre productions, where the teacher and director Greg Johnson said of her: “There are a lot of talented kids at UM, but she’s always been a standout. She’s absolutely a transcendent actress. We were lucky to have her.”
Gladstone said one particular piece of advice she took to heart at UM was: “Keep yourself interested and invested in the world, and you will stay an interesting performer. As soon as you disconnect from the human experience, you’ll be flat.”
Theater Work and Movies
From 2009 to 2013, Gladstone performed with Living Voices, an educational touring theater company presenting shows about marginalized histories. She made her film debut in Jimmy P: Psychotherapy of a Plains Indian (2012), a movie about a Blackfeet World War II veteran portrayed by Benicio Del Toro.
She next appeared in Winter in the Blood (2013), a hallucinatory film about a Native American man in a small Montana town. Gladstone called it a “labor of love” for people from Montana, saying: “Winter in the Blood relied so heavily on the Montana community, so many locals, and so many people who have a strong connection with the legacy of the novel.” She also appeared in the film Buster’s Mal Heart (2016).
Gladstone was praised for her portrayal as a rancher in Certain Women (2016) by independent filmmaker Kelly Reichardt. Starring alongside actors Michelle Williams, Laura Dern, and Kristen Stewart, The Guardian called it her “big break,” while Rolling Stone wrote: “Gladstone gives a performance of such piercing honesty and yearning, you almost can’t look at her.” The rising actor went on to earn several awards and nominations. That included winning the Los Angeles Film Critics Association Award and the Boston Society of Film Critics Award for Best Supporting Actress. Gladstone was also nominated for the Independent Spirit Award for Best Supporting Female.
Gladstone performed onstage for the Oregon Shakespeare Festival in 2017 and worked with a Native American youth theater program called Red Eagle Soaring. She made television appearances in HBO’s Room 104 (2017-2020), Showtime’s Billions (2019-2023), and FX’s Reservation Dogs (2022) and collaborated with Kelly Reichardt again with a small role in the independent film First Cow (2019). She also appeared in a Yale Repertory Theatre production of Mary Kathryn Nagle’s Manahatta in 2020.
Historic Oscar Nomination for Killers of the Flower Moon
In August 2020, during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, Gladstone began questioning whether she could continue to sustain herself through acting and considered a career change, planning to apply for seasonal work with the U.S. Department of Agriculture tracking murder hornets. During this time, however, she received a Zoom meeting request from filmmaker Martin Scorsese, who was impressed with her work in Certain Women. This led to her being cast in Scorsese’s Killers of the Flower Moon, released in October 2023.
Based on David Grann’s nonfiction book of the same name, Killers of the Flower Moon depicts a series of murders on the Osage Nation Reservation in Oklahoma during the 1920s. Gladstone portrays Mollie Kyle Burkhart, based on a real Osage woman whose friends and family members are mysteriously murdered. Gladstone spent months studying Burkhart—even meeting with her real-life granddaughter—and attended dozens of meetings with Osage leaders to understand the legacy of the community and ensure their input was heard and implemented.
Gladstone said she drew inspiration from her own life and upbringing in delivering the performance, though she and Burkhart came from different tribes and periods. “I consider it a true gift and great responsibility to be trusted with Mollie Burkhart and will hold her preciously with both arms, close to my heart,” Gladstone said of the casting. “My most profound thanks to Osage Nation, it is a remarkable gift to be welcomed by you and to be able to tell this story.”
Scorsese said of Gladstone: “I could see that she trusted in simplicity. She understood her own onscreen presence as an expressive instrument that could speak for itself. That’s quite rare. Her silences, as Mollie, were often more powerful than her words.” Her castmate Leonardo DiCaprio added: “Lily has amazing presence and strength… As a Native actor, in many ways, she became a source of guidance for all of us, Scorsese included, in terms of how we told the story.”
Killers of the Flower Moon has been described as Gladstone’s mainstream breakout role, and Town & Country wrote that she received the “biggest Oscar buzz” out of the 2023 Cannes Film Festival. Deadline wrote that Gladstone is the “real star” of the film, despite appearing with such acclaimed actors as DiCaprio and Robert De Niro.
She made Academy Awards history by becoming the first Native American nominee for Actress in a Leading Role—though she ultimately lost to Emma Stone of Poor Things. “[The nomination] belongs to so many people: the Osage Nation, the Blackfeet Nation, the Nez Perce Nation, every Indigenous actor whose shoulders I stand on,” Gladstone told Entertainment Weekly. “It’s circumstantial that I’m the first, and I’m so very grateful. I just know that I’m not going to be the last, not by a long shot.”
The performance earned her equally historic trophies at the 2024 Golden Globes and Screen Actors Guild Awards. She is the first Indigenous person to win Best Actress in a Drama Motion Picture and Outstanding Performance by a Female Actor in a Leading Role, respectively.
Latest Projects
After the success of Killers of the Flower Moon, Gladstone picked back up with another true crime project, this time for TV. She stars with Riley Keough in Under the Bridge, a Hulu limited series that began in April 2024. The show is based on the true story of Reena Virk, a 14-year-old Canadian teen who was murdered by her friends. Gladstone portrays Cam Bentland, one of the few women of color on the police force in Victoria, British Columbia, as Keough’s character investigates the case as a journalist.
June 2024 will deliver the Gladstone-led drama Fancy Dance to a wider audience after its 2023 Sundance Film Festival debut. In the movie, Gladstone plays Jax, a woman caring for her niece following the disappearance of her sister. Fancy Dance is scheduled to arrive on Apple TV+ on June 28.
Her first new movie post–Killers of the Flower Moon is set to be a sequel to 2022’s The Unknown Country. In that movie, Gladstone starred as Tana, a woman traveling across the United States while deep in grief. For the upcoming sequel, Jazzy, the actor tackles a supporting role in the film about the titular Oglala Lakota girl growing up in South Dakota. Jazzy, portrayed by Jasmine Bearkiller-Shangreaux, previously shared scenes with Tana in The Unknown Country. As of April 2024, a release date hasn’t been announced.
Personal Life
Gladstone often wears clothes by Native designers and Native jewelry to her red-carpet appearances. She has a dog named Birdy, who regularly appears in her Instagram posts.
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