Martin Scorsese’s eagerly awaited new film, “Killers of the Flower Moon”, is released this month. Alongside Leonardo DiCaprio and Robert De Niro and a revelation: Lily Gladstone.
Fans of Martin Scorsese will be delighted to witness the reunion between the New York director and his favourite actors, Leonardo DiCaprio and Robert de Niro. This is the trio’s first cinema reunion – if we exclude the $70 million advertisement for a Macau resort in 2015 (which also featured Brad Pitt). And yet, the third star of this three-hour-and-twenty-six-minute historical feature almost seems to overshadow the two legends.
We first discovered Lily Gladstone in “Certain Women” by Kelly Reichardt (2016). Her deeply moving role as an introverted country girl who falls in love with a lawyer (Kristen Stewart) earned her numerous awards and nominations at festivals dedicated to American independent cinema.
Of Native American descent, Lily Gladstone spent part of her childhood on the Blackfoot Reservation in the northern United States. After studying theatre at the University of Montana, she took her first steps on a movie set thanks to French director Arnaud Desplechin, who shot “Jimmy P. (Psychotherapy of a Plains Indian)”, a fictional film about the Blackfoot tribe, in 2013. The film was shown at Cannes, but without her – the future actress was only an extra. Hard to imagine that ten years later, she would be walking the red carpet for what was the most eagerly awaited preview of the 76th Festival.
In the main hall of the Cannes Festival, her favourite actress, the one Lily Gladstone has admired since she was fifteen: Cate Blanchett. “Our eyes met, and she sat right in front of us. I’ll never forget that little moment,” Lily Gladstone told Vanity Fair, still overwhelmed with emotion. It has to be said that, at thirty-seven years of age, the actress has had her phase of doubt. Where most actresses breakthrough in their twenties, Lily Gladstone no longer believed, thinking it was too late. Despite the critical success of “Certain Women”, and a small role in Kelly Reichardt’s next film (First Cow), the offers weren’t pouring in. Or maybe it was to play the stereotypical Indian, which the actress, proud of her identity, always refused.
A little desperate, the actress was about to apply for a seasonal job with the Ministry of Agriculture when, at the height of the Covid-19 pandemic, she received the e-mail that was to change everything: “Mr. Scorsese would like to meet you.” One Zoom meeting later with the director of “Mean Streets” and “Goodfellas”, and Lily Gladstone’s career was back on track. A Native role once again, but an authentic and complex one, inspired by the true story of mysterious murders in the Osage community at the beginning of the twentieth century.
“Killers of the Flower Moon”,
Available in cinemas from October 18, and soon on Apple TV+.