Graham Greene dies at 73: Oscar-nominated ‘Dances with Wolves’ actor passes away after long illness

Canadian actor Graham Greene, celebrated for his Oscar-nominated performance in the 1990 classic Dances with Wolves, passed away on Monday in Toronto following a prolonged illness. He was 73.

Greene is survived by his wife, Hilary Blackmore, and his daughter Lilly Lazare-Greene.

About Graham Greene

Born in June 1952 in Ohsweken, on Canada’s Six Nations Reserve, Greene started his career as a theatre actor. By 1970, he was regularly appearing in professional stage productions.

He made his television debut in 1979 with the drama series The Great Detective, and his first movie was Running Brave in 1983.

Greene’s major breakthrough in Hollywood came with Dances with Wolves, where he portrayed the character ‘Kicking Bird’. The performance earned him an Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actor in 1991. The film received 12 Oscar nominations and won seven, including Best Picture and Best Actor for Kevin Costner.

He was later seen in several Hollywood movies, including Maverick, Die Hard with a Vengeance, The Green Mile, The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn – Part 2, and Molly’s Game.

Graham Greene also appeared in Thunderheart (1992) alongside Val Kilmer, Transamerica (2005), Wind River (2017), and the FX series Reservation Dogs.

Recently, he starred in the Tyler Sheridan series 1883 and Tulsa King.

Throughout his career, Graham received many accolades, including a Grammy, several Gemini Awards, and the Earle Grey Lifetime Achievement Award. In June 2008, Sir Wilfred Laurier University in Waterloo, Ontario, near the Oneida Reserve, bestowed him with an honorary doctor of law degree, according to a report by Hollywood Reporter.

Graham was also the recipient of the Order of Canada and the Governor General’s Award.

Speaking about his career in a 2024 interview for Canada’s Theatre Museum, Graham said, “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."