Oscar-nominated Canadian actor Graham Greene, who broke through with memorable roles across multiple genres at a time when the entertainment industry shunned Indigenous talent, has died at the age of 73.
Green’s management team said he died Monday in Stratford, Ont., after a long illness.
The actor, who was born in Ohsweken, Ont., and is from the Six Nations Reserve, starred in a steady stream of film, television and theatre projects starting in the late 1970s.
He earned an Oscar nomination for his supporting role as “Kicking Bird” in the 1990 American Western film Dances with Wolves , directed by Kevin Costner, which won Best Picture.
Last year, he won a Canadian Screen Award for playing a version of himself in the comedy thriller The Seed directed by Kaniehtiio Horn.
Horn, who was born in Ottawa and raised on a Mohawk reserve, says she first encountered Green’s work when her family would rent the 1991 film Transparent from their local video store.
“He played this playful, badass character,” Horn told The Canadian Press on Sunday night. “He was one of the first roles I think we saw where we could actually cheer on an indigenous character as he went on some kind of revenge.”
“It was really cathartic to watch a lot of indigenous people, especially after the OKA crisis in the early 1990s,” she said.
This show remained one that kept Horne in check as she later became an actor.
“You can tell he’s having fun as an actor. It’s just the best thing to watch because he really made it his own,” Horn said.
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Horn and Green would eventually work together on the Syfy series The Challenge as well as the FX hit Reservation Dogs in the Area. By the time she cast him in her directorial debut Seeds , they had developed what she described as a “niece-uncle” bond. Horn said crews shot Green’s scenes in one day and said she loved the riffs back and forth on set.
“Having him play and improvise … it was a little surreal, but he made it easy for me. I feel like he just wanted me to do well, and he would tell me that. He would tell me he was proud of me,” she said.
Ben Mark Holzberg/Syfy/NBCU Photo Bank/NBCUniversal via Getty Images
Horn said Green’s death marks the loss of “one of the old guard,” likening him to other accomplished Indigenous actors like Gary Farmer and Wes Studi.
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She added that Green was an inspiration to not let herself be cast in the same type of roles.
“As much as they probably wanted to stereotype him… he never let that happen. And even then, the ‘natives on horseback’ roles that he got, he stood out and made those roles his own and just interesting to watch.”
“He was not only a good Indigenous actor, but a good actor who was Indigenous.”
Lou Diamond Phillips, Green’s co-star on the short-lived TV show Wolf Lake , said he was “terribly saddened” to hear about Green’s betrayal on social media.
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“From Wolf Lake to Longmire, we had a beautiful friendship. An actor’s actor. One of the wittiest, most youthful, warmest people I’ve ever known. Iconic and legendary,” Phillips wrote.
Green was awarded the Governor General’s Award for Lifetime Artistic Achievement in June and received the Order of Canada in 2015.
“He was a man of great moral ethics (and) character and will be forever missed,” his agent, Michael Green, said in a statement.
Green’s credits also include the action classic Die Hard: With a Vengeance, the Tom Hanks-fronted drama The Green Mile , and the western comedy Montage in the Field.
On stage, he has appeared in Of Mice and Men and The Merchant of Venice at the Stratford Festival, as well as Thomson Highway’s Dry Lips Should Move to Kapuskasking in the Area .
& copy 2025. Canadian Press
