Lily Gladstone’s ethnicity, confirmed

The brilliant Lily Gladstone has recently shot to prominence with a string of outstanding performances on the big and small screens. Born on Aug. 2, 1986, in Kalispell, Montana, the 38-year-old actress has been active as a professional performer for over a decade but only became a household name in 2023.

That was thanks to her Oscar-nominated and Golden Globe-winning performance as Mollie Burkhart, wife to Leonardo DiCaprio’s World War I veteran Ernest Burkhart, in Martin Scorsese’s epic Western crime drama Killers of the Flower Moon. Since then, much information about the talented star has been unearthed, including her many past roles.

Gladstone’s television career began in 2017, with a role as Carol Red Crow in the unaired pilot of the crime drama Scalped. She has since hosted the YouTube educational show Crash Course, appeared in two episodes of the anthology series Room 104, appeared in six episodes of the drama series Billions, had a voice role in one episode of the animated sitcom Tuca & Bertie, appeared in two episodes of the highly-acclaimed comedy-drama Reservation Dogs, and earned a nomination for a Primetime Emmy Award for her tremendous performance as Cam Bentland in the crime drama miniseries Under the Bridge.

On the big screen, her career started with a small role in the French drama Jimmy P: Psychotherapy of a Plains Indian (2012). She has since appeared in the drama Winter in the Blood (2013), the drama Certain Women and the surrealist mystery Buster’s Mal Heart (both 2016), the survival drama Walking Out (2017), the drama First Cow (2019), the drama The Unknown Country, the hybrid animation-live action movie Quantum Cowbows, and the Western The Last Manhunt (all 2022), drama Fancy Dance and the above-mentioned Killers of the Flower Moon (both 2023), and, most recently, Jazzy (2024). She’s set to star in the rom-com The Wedding Banquet in 2025.

But fans still have questions about Gladstone, one of which relates to her ethnicity.

What is Lily Gladstone’s ethnicity?

While Lily Gladstone is very much an American, her ancestral heritage weaves a rich tapestry.

According to Town & Country, Gladstone’s mother is white, and her father is an eclectic mix of NiMíiPuu or Nez Perce and Siksikaitsitapi, also called Blackfeet. An archived page of The North Edinburgh News points out that, on her mother’s side, she is descended from the great-great-grandfather of a first cousin of the 19th century U.K. Prime Minister William Ewart Gladstone. Another archived page, this time of The Guardian, on her father’s side, her great, great grandfather was Red Crow, a prominent treaty chief.

That all comes together to mean Gladstone’s ethnicity includes European, North American, and Pacific Northwest heritage — and we can only imagine her career is making the people from all those places incredibly proud of her.