Lily Gladstone Made Oscar History as the Film Won Nothing

Lily Gladstone became the first Native American nominated for Best Actress, then watched Emma Stone win and Killers of the Flower Moon take none of its 10 Oscars. The 96th Academy Awards, on March 10, 2024, filed those firsts and then handed every statue to someone else.

Apple had put the Martin Scorsese film on the board in 10 races two months earlier. The Osage singers still got a standing ovation. Gladstone still left with the citation that no Native American woman had held in that category. The envelopes stayed empty for the movie that put them there.

Killers of the Flower Moon Lost All 10 of Its Oscars

Apple’s awards announcement listed 10 Academy Award nominations for Killers of the Flower Moon, including Best Picture, Best Director for Scorsese, Best Actress for Gladstone, and Best Supporting Actor for Robert De Niro. The rest of the slate was costume design, production design, original score, original song, film editing, and cinematography. Oppenheimer led the morning with 13 nominations, then Poor Things with 11.

By the end of the Dolby Theatre broadcast, the Scorsese film had converted none of that paper. Best Picture and Best Director went to Oppenheimer and Christopher Nolan. Supporting Actor went to Robert Downey Jr. Cinematography went to Hoyte van Hoytema, also for Oppenheimer. Costume design went to Holly Waddington for Poor Things. Best Actress went to Emma Stone in Poor Things.

THE FIRSTS AND WHAT THE ACADEMY DID WITH THEM

Score, song, editing, and production design also went elsewhere. So did the picture prize. The night’s pattern was simple enough to read without a tracker: the film that carried the Native firsts did not leave with a category.

THE 10 RACES ON APPLE’S LIST

• Best Picture: Producers Dan Friedkin, Bradley Thomas, Martin Scorsese, and Daniel Lupi; Oppenheimer won.
• Directing: Martin Scorsese; Christopher Nolan won for Oppenheimer.
• Actress: Lily Gladstone as Mollie Kyle; Emma Stone won for Poor Things.
• Supporting Actor: Robert De Niro as William Hale; Robert Downey Jr. won for Oppenheimer.
• Cinematography: Rodrigo Prieto; Hoyte van Hoytema won for Oppenheimer.
• Costume Design: Jacqueline West; Holly Waddington won for Poor Things.
• Original Score: Robbie Robertson; the film did not win.
• Original Song: Scott George, Wahzhazhe (A Song for My People); the film did not win.
• Film Editing: Thelma Schoonmaker; the film did not win.
• Production Design: Jack Fisk and Adam Willis; the film did not win.

Scorsese, already the most nominated living director, brought his career Best Director total to 10 with this film. That number matched his movie’s nomination count and, like the movie’s count, did not become a win on this night.

The Firsts That Fit on a Ballot

Gladstone is Blackfeet (Siksikaitsitapi) and Nez Perce (Nimíipuu) on her father’s side, raised on the Blackfeet Reservation in Browning, Montana, until age 11. She played Mollie Kyle, an Osage woman whose family was targeted in the 1920s murders that followed the Nation’s oil wealth, opposite Leonardo DiCaprio’s Ernest Burkhart. Apple called her the first Native American nominated for Best Actress, and called George the first Osage member nominated for any Academy Award.

Those firsts had already been rehearsed on earlier stages. On January 7, 2024, Gladstone won the Golden Globe for Best Actress in a Motion Picture, Drama, the first Indigenous actor to take that prize. She opened in Blackfeet, introducing herself as Eagle Woman, then switched to English to talk about a studio trick older than her career.

I’m so grateful that I can speak even a little bit of my language, which I’m not fluent in, up here because in this business, Native actors used to speak their lines in English and then the sound mixers would run them backwards to accomplish Native languages on camera.

Lily Gladstone, Golden Globe acceptance speech, January 7, 2024

She dedicated the Globe to “every little rez kid, every little urban kid, every little Native kid who has a dream, who is seeing themselves represented and our stories told by ourselves in our own words.” In February 2024 she became the first Indigenous actor to win the Screen Actors Guild’s leading female prize for the same role. The Oscar nomination arrived on January 23. The statue did not follow.

THE DATES THAT BUILT THE NIGHT

1. January 7, 2024: Wins the Golden Globe for Best Actress in a Motion Picture, Drama, the first Indigenous actor to do so.
2. January 23, 2024: Oscar nominations name Gladstone in Best Actress and Scott George in Best Original Song, among 10 nods for the film.
3. March 10, 2024: The 96th Academy Awards give the film a live Osage performance and no awards.

Stone, taking Best Actress, named Sandra Hüller, Annette Bening, Carey Mulligan, and Gladstone, then said she shared the prize and was in awe. Jennifer Lawrence, presenting, called Gladstone “the soul of Killers of the Flower Moon” and said every second of Mollie Burkhart carried “the plight, resilience and spirit of the Osage people.” Sharing a sentence is not the same as sharing a statue. The camera still cut to Gladstone’s hands at her mouth.

In Pawhuska, a Watch Party Learned the Night’s Limit

Two hundred and sixty people filled the Osage Casino in Pawhuska, Oklahoma, to watch the same broadcast. Each time Gladstone appeared, the room gasped or clapped. When Scott George, the Osage Singers, 10 dancers, and the three Inlonshka Drumkeepers from Grayhorse, Hominy, and Pawhuska performed Wahzhazhe on the Oscar stage, people in Pawhuska cried. Los Angeles stood up for them. Then the categories kept going the other way.

It was great. However, we’re still on the back burner. Something may come of it, or it may not. I do not think the world is ready for the First Americans.

Cecilia Tallchief, Osage elder, Osage Casino watch party, Pawhuska, March 10, 2024

Osage artist Welana Queton asked when it would be their time, and whether they could have anything, then credited Stone for saying thank you. Watch-party emcee John Parker told the room they had sat “amongst the stars, making a place for ourselves.” His mother, Dana Daylight, wanted a win and still called it a monumental night. Cliff Wafford, a Ketoowah Cherokee actor who appeared in the film, said the results were disappointing and that the nominations were “something to grow on.” Dolores Scott, George’s mother, kept it shorter: she was disappointed, and proud of her son.

Aimee Inglis, in from California, said the Academy did not have enough understanding to value what the film took, and that they should have won at least one of the 10. Tony Daniels drove from Joplin, Missouri, with his mother and said being nominated and represented was wonderful. Fireworks still went up over the casino after the last envelope. The party had been planned as a celebration. It stayed one, with a bruise under it.

The argument that followed the night has not moved much. People who go back to the film still talk about Gladstone’s face more than about Stone’s trophy. On the awards trail, the questions pointed at Gladstone often started with representation, while craft questions clustered elsewhere in the same category. That split did not invent the loss. It did show what the industry thought the nomination was for.

How Lily Gladstone Reached Mollie Kyle

Gladstone was born on August 2, 1986, in Kalispell, Montana, and later moved with her family to the Seattle area. She earned a BFA in acting and directing, with a Native American Studies minor, from the University of Montana in 2008, then taught acting workshops in Native communities, including image-theatre work used in violence-prevention programs. Her screen start was small: Sunshine First Raise in Jimmy P: Psychotherapy of a Plains Indian (2012), then independent films that did not sell her as a symbol.

The part that changed the temperature was Jamie, a rancher, in Kelly Reichardt’s Certain Women (2016). Gladstone later told the University of Montana the casting still surprised her. “It’s pretty revolutionary that part went to an almost total unknown and that it went to me, a Native actress, without it being a trope,” she said. Critics groups in Los Angeles and Boston named her supporting actress of the year. She worked again with Reichardt on First Cow (2019), wrote story and starred in Morrisa Maltz’s The Unknown Country (2022), and turned up on Reservation Dogs and Billions.

Scorsese’s film, from David Grann’s book, gave her the rare studio-scale Native lead that was also a person with land, money, illness, and a husband who was poisoning her. Mollie watches, waits, and withholds. That is the work people mean when they say the performance lives in the eyes. It is also the work that won the Globe and the SAG prize and still lost the Oscar to a louder, stranger turn in Poor Things. The two performances were not in a footrace on the same track. Only one track had a Native first attached to it, and that is the one the Academy declined to stamp.

The Parts That Arrived After the Envelope

The nomination did not come with a statue, and it did not freeze her in Mollie’s blanket. While the Killers campaign was still running, Gladstone pushed Apple to take Erica Tremblay’s Fancy Dance, which had premiered at Sundance in 2023 with Gladstone as Jax, a woman searching for her missing sister on the same Oklahoma ground, a century after Mollie. She executive-produced that film. Apple put it in theaters and on Apple TV+ in 2024.

THE WORK SHE TOOK AFTER MOLLIE

• Fancy Dance (2023/24): Stars as Jax and executive produces; Apple TV+ distributes Tremblay’s feature.
• Under the Bridge (2024): Plays Cam Bentland in the eight-episode crime miniseries about the murder of Reena Virk.
• Jazzy (2024): Returns to Maltz’s world as Tana and executive producer, after The Unknown Country.
• Bring Them Home and Sugarcane (2024): Narrates and executive-produces one; executive-produces the other.
• The Wedding Banquet (2025): Plays Lee in Andrew Ahn’s remake.
• In Memoriam (2026): Plays Samantha opposite Sharon Stone.
• The Thomas Crown Affair (2027): In post-production on Michael B. Jordan’s remake.

In May 2024 she sat on the main competition jury at Cannes, under president Greta Gerwig. The through-line is not a single “Native slot.” She kept making Native-led work with Tremblay and Maltz, and she took parts that do not ask her to stand in for a nation. The Oscar night did not fund that slate. The heat from Mollie, the Globe, and the nomination did. That is what a first without a win still spends.

Native Actors Had Been in This Room Before

Gladstone’s Best Actress nomination was new for Native Americans in that category. It was not the first time an Indigenous North American actor had been read aloud at the Oscars. Chief Dan George, Tsleil-Waututh, was nominated for supporting actor for Little Big Man. Graham Greene, Oneida, was nominated for supporting actor for Dances with Wolves. Wes Studi, Cherokee, received an honorary Oscar in 2019, the first Native American given that Governors Award. None of those competitive acting races ended in a win. Greene lost to Joe Pesci for Goodfellas, another Scorsese film. George lost to John Mills for Ryan’s Daughter.

INDIGENOUS ACTING OSCARS BEFORE GLADSTONE’S NIGHT

Aparicio and Castle-Hughes are the Indigenous women who reached Best Actress before Gladstone, from Mexico and Aotearoa New Zealand. They are why the precise wording matters. Gladstone is the first Native American in that race, not the first Indigenous woman the Academy had ever seen there. No Native American actor had won a competitive acting Oscar when the 96th awards ended, and Studi’s honorary statue remained the Academy’s official acting-adjacent first.

George’s song still exists outside the envelope. Wahzhazhe is a song for his people, performed on the biggest industry stage the Osage Nation had been handed, then filed under nominee. Gladstone’s Mollie is still the face a lot of viewers use to remember a three-and-a-half-hour film that also starred DiCaprio and De Niro. The Academy’s own records keep her name in the 2024 actress list, one line above the winner.

Frequently Asked Questions

Which Indigenous actresses were nominated for Best Actress before Lily Gladstone?

Keisha Castle-Hughes, who is Māori, was nominated for Whale Rider (the 76th Academy Awards). Yalitza Aparicio, who is Mixtec and Trique, was nominated for Roma (the 91st). Gladstone is the first Native American in the category; those earlier nods were Indigenous, and they were not U.S. tribal-nation firsts.

Where did Lily Gladstone study acting?

She graduated in 2008 from the University of Montana with a BFA in acting and directing and a Native American Studies minor. After that she taught acting in Native communities, including a “sculpture garden” image-theatre method used in violence-prevention work with the National Indigenous Women’s Resource Center, before the Certain Women breakthrough in 2016.

What other Apple film was nominated the same morning as Killers of the Flower Moon?

Ridley Scott’s Napoleon drew three nominations, for costume design, production design, and visual effects. Apple’s total that year was 13, a company record at the time, with 10 of those 13 belonging to Killers of the Flower Moon and none of those 10 turning into Oscars on March 10, 2024.

Who is Mollie Kyle in the true story?

Mollie Kyle (later Burkhart) was an Osage woman whose relatives were murdered for oil headrights during the Reign of Terror in 1920s Oklahoma. In the film she marries Ernest Burkhart, who takes part in the plot against her family while she is slowly poisoned. Gladstone learned enough Osage that elders at the Pawhuska watch party remarked on how well she spoke it.

What did Scott George’s Oscar-night performance include?

George, who directs the Osage language department and wrote Wahzhazhe (A Song for My People), performed with the Osage Singers, 10 dancers, and the three Inlonshka Drumkeepers representing the Grayhorse, Hominy, and Pawhuska districts. The Dolby Theatre gave them a standing ovation; the original-song race still went to another film.

The Academy’s 2024 actress list still reads Lily Gladstone, Killers of the Flower Moon, Mollie Burkhart, with the winner line one name away. That is the history the night actually filed.