Trivia

Was voted "Most likely to win an Oscar" in high school. In 2024, she received an Oscar nomination in the category "Best Actress in a Leading Role" for her performance in Killers of the Flower Moon (2023).

After her family moved away from Browning due to a lack of economic opportunities, she graduated high school in a suburb of Seattle, 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.

For the first years of her life, the family had a log cabin with a wood-burning stove.

Her parents lived on the Blackfeet Reservation, and when her mother went into labor early one August morning, no one was available at Indian Health Service in Browning to give her a caesarian. So an emergency helicopter flew her to Kalispell Regional Medical Center just as the sun crested the Rocky Mountain Front. Lily's father told her she didn't cry when she was born. She just looked around the room and smiled.

Cousin of Montana's native singer and storyteller, Jack Gladstone.

She is the first Native American actress to be nominated for an Oscar.

Has an interest in apiculture, and when her career slowed down during the COVID-19 pandemic, nearly applied for a job with the U.S. Department of Agriculture, tracking invasive Asian Giant Hornets in Seattle. Until her agent called about auditioning for Martin Scorsese's Killers of the Flower Moon (2023).

Her father worked in broadcast journalism and is of Blackfeet and Nimíipuu descent, while her mother, an early childhood education specialist, is white.

She grew up on the reservation of the Blackfeet Nation in Browning, Montana and lived there until she was 11.

She cited watching Le Retour du Jedi (1983) as a child and wanting to be an Ewok as the what inspired her to become an actor.

Uses she/they pronouns, citing most Indigenous American languages lack gendered pronouns - "My pronoun use is partly a way of decolonizing gender for myself.".

Was invited to join the Actors branch of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences (AMPAS) in 2024.

Lily Gladstone is of Blackfeet and Nimíipuu (Nez Perce) descent. The Blackfeet (Blackfoot Confederacy) comprise the Siksika, Kainai (Blood), and Piikani (Peigan) First Nations in Alberta, Canada, and the Blackfeet Nation in Montana. Significant figures in Blackfoot history include Crowfoot, chief of the Siksika, and Running Eagle, a female Piikani warrior and leader.

The Nimíipuu, better known as the Nez Perce--historically residing in Idaho and parts of Oregon and Washington--are known for having provided essential assistance to the Lewis and Clark Expedition in 1805 and having fought to defend their traditional lands in the Nez Perce War of 1877, in which Chief Joseph (Hin-mah-too-yah-lat-kekt) rose to prominence.