Graham Greene, the Canadian actor best known for his role in the 1990 film Dances with Wolves, died in Toronto on Monday after a long illness. He was 73.
His death was confirmed by his agent Michael Greene, who told Deadline: “He was a great man of morals, ethics and character and will be eternally missed. You are finally free.”
Greene was celebrated for his portrayal of medicine man Kicking Bird in Kevin Costner’s Dances with Wolves. His performance not only earned him an Oscar nomination for best supporting actor but also helped shift perceptions about Indigenous talent in a mainstream Hollywood production.
Born in 1952 on the Six Nations Reserve in Ontario, Canada, Greene was raised as Oneida and worked as a welder, draftsman and audio technician before turning to acting in the 1970s with theatre performances in his country and England.
Talking about how he “stumbled into acting”, Greene told Reader’s Digest Canada in 2018: “These people keep me in the shade, give me food and water, take me over to where I say what I'm supposed to say, then they take me back. Wow – this is the life of a dog!”
He made his television debut in a 1979 episode of The Great Detective and film debut with Running Brave in 1983.
He earned fame when Costner cast him as Kicking Bird (Ziŋtká Nagwáka) in his feature directorial debut Dances with Wolves.
The film received 12 Academy Award nominations, including best supporting actor for Greene, and won seven, including best picture.
In a 2024 interview with Canada's Theatre Museum, Greene spoke of the stereotypical expectations for Indigenous characters: “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. I don’t know anybody who behaves like that. Native people have an incredible sense of humour.”
Greene’s film credits include Thunderheart (1992), Maverick (1994), Die Hard with a Vengeance (1995), The Green Mile (1999), Transamerica (2005), Wind River (2017), Molly’s Game (2017), and The Twilight Saga.
His final completed film, Ice Fall, is set for posthumous release.
On TV, he appeared in Northern Exposure, Lonesome Dove: The TV Series, Longmire, Reservation Dogs, Echo, 1883, Tulsa King, The Last of Us, and Goliath.
Greene received numerous awards throughout his life, including a Grammy in 2000 for Best Spoken Word Album for Children, a Canadian Screen Award in 2024 for his performance in Seeds, a Governor General’s Performing Arts Award for lifetime achievement in 2025, and a star on Canada’s Walk of Fame.
He was appointed a Member of the Order of Canada in 2015.
On whether he believed his identity as a Native American held him up in his career, Greene said he didn’t like “to be pigeonholed as one thing because you get stuck in one role”.
“I want to be diverse in roles and do other things. I did that once and it was fine. Let’s move on. You don’t drive the same car for 50 years or live in the same place – unless that’s what you want,” he told Salon in a 2021 interview. “But it’s boring to do one thing all the time: work in an assembly line for eight hours a day, five days a week, 52 weeks of the year, with some time off for 40 years doing the same thing over and over. It’s mind-numbing.”
Greene is survived by his wife Hilary Blackmore, daughter Lilly Lazare-Greene, and grandson Tarlo.
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