Lily Gladstone is opening up about her ethnic background and what her success in the industry means to her community. She also opened up about how her gender identity plays a huge role in how she stays in touch with her community.
The ‘Killers Of The Flower Moon’ actress who lifted the Golden Globe award this year for her portrayal in the highly acclaimed film has often been verbal about her gender identity and how she uses she/they pronouns. Here’s what she had to say about gender fluidity, and how it helps her stay in touch with her community.
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Lily Gladstone Talks About Being Gender Fluid
Talking to Independent, Lily Gladstone opened up about her gender fluidity and how it has contributed a lot to how she perceived her roles. “The way that I’m able to metabolize a lot of characters has to do with their gender expression, and the gender roles imposed on them by society,” she explained. “I think of gender as a cultural thing, like Blackfeet don’t have gendered pronouns, we have gendered verbs.” This means that names are not selected to uphold a gender binary in the community but rather serve as a sign of a person’s purpose or skill set within the tribe. “My grandfather had a woman’s name, for example.”
The actress also opened up about what her success meant to her native background and how it started a revolution for people of her tribe who embraced the language and culture with pride. When she won her award at the Golden Globes for ‘Killers Of The Flower Moon’, she accepted her trophy while speaking partially in the Blackfeet language, the tribe that she belongs to. Soon after, young Blackfeet people started sending her videos in which they introduced themselves using their Indian names and talked about their life goals.
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Lily Gladstone In ‘Killers Of The Flower Moon’
The actress from Native America portrayed Mollie Burkhart, the wife of Ernest Burkhart, played by Leonardo DiCaprio.
Gladstone’s performance in the movie earned her both a Golden Globe and a Screen Actors Guild Award. Gladstone created history as the first Native American actress to receive an Oscar nomination.
Speaking about how she’s the first Native American actress to receive an Oscar nomination, she said, “Why am I the first? Why did it have to take this long for me to be the first Indigenous North American? Most of the films that show up in these categories are shot on Indigenous land in North America, and it’s taken this long.”
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