Graham Greene, the award-winning Canadian First Nations actor, is dead at 73. His passing in a Toronto hospital after waging a lengthy illness marks the end of a career filled with pioneering roles in Hollywood. Early life Greene was born in 1952 on the Six Nations Reserve in Ohsweken, Ontario. His career spanned more than four decades and he was a trailblazer for Indigenous people in film and television.
Greene’s career in the arts started on stage, acting in several Canadian and English productions throughout the 1970s. He made his screen debut in 1979 with an episode of the Canadian drama series The Great Detective. He scored his breakthrough feature film role in 1983, campaigning to play the lead in the biopic Running Brave. His Hollywood breakthrough actually came in 1990 when he played Kicking Bird, a historical Lakota-Sioux medicine man, in Kevin Costner’s Oscar-winning western Dances with Wolves.
Greene’s breakout role as the Arapahoe Indian in Dances with Wolves earned him an Academy Award nomination and overnight propelled his career into the fast lane. Following this success, he took on notable roles in films such as Thunderheart, Maverick, Die Hard with a Vengeance, The Green Mile, and The Twilight Saga: New Moon. During his storied career, Greene was the recipient of many prestigious awards such as Grammy, Gemini and Canadian Screen awards. He received a star on Canada’s Walk of Fame. This accolade continues to guarantee his place in history as one of the most influential and pioneering masters of entertainment.
In June of this year, Greene was awarded the Canadian Governor General’s Performing Arts Award for Lifetime Achievement. This award is in recognition of his extraordinary contributions to the performing arts. Greene is missed by his wife of 35 years, Hilary Blackmore, their daughter Lilly Lazare-Greene and grandson Tarlo.
Looking back on his newfound, but short-lived, fame, Greene once opened up about the struggles he went through as an Indigenous actor.
“When I first started out in the business, it was a very strange thing where they’d hand you the script where you had to speak the way they thought native people spoke. And in order to get my foot in the door a little further, I did it. I went along with it for a while … You gotta look stoic. Don’t smile … you gotta grunt a lot.” – Graham Greene
Greene insisted on the centrality of familial and cultural ties in his life and art.
“And that’s what I said to Kevin [Costner]. I said, you know, the people in this film [Dances with Wolves], in this village, they have an incredible family, incredible relationship and fun has always been part of that. Fun is 50% of how they live and enjoy things. Family is family, no matter what.” – Graham Greene
His agent, Michael Greene (no relation), praised him as “a great man of morals, ethics and character,” highlighting the impact he had not only on film but within the community he represented.