Graham Greene (actor)

Graham Greene CM (June 22, 1952 – September 1, 2025) was a Canadian First Nations (Oneida) actor and recording artist, active in film, television and theatre in a career spanning over 50 years. He achieved international fame for his role as Kicking Bird (Ziŋtká Nagwáka) in Kevin Costner's Dances With Wolves (1990), which earned him an Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actor. His other notable films include Thunderheart (1992), Maverick (1994), Die Hard with a Vengeance (1995), The Green Mile (1999), Skins (2002), Transamerica (2005), Casino Jack (2010), Winter's Tale (2014), The Shack (2017), and Wind River (2017).

In addition to his Oscar nomination, Greene was a Grammy Award, Gemini Award, Canadian Screen Award, and a Dora Mavor Moore Award winner. In 2025, he received the Governor General's Performing Arts Award.

Greene was an Oneida born on June 22, 1952, in Ohsweken, on the Six Nations Reserve in Ontario, the son of John, a paramedic and maintenance man, and Lillian Greene. He lived in Hamilton, Ontario, as a young man. He was a second cousin once removed of fellow actor Gary Farmer. Before moving into acting, Greene worked as a draftsman, civil technologist, steelworker, and rock-band crew member.

He worked as an audio technician for Toronto rock bands and in a recording studio in Ancaster, Ontario. He later related that musician Kelly Jay repeatedly encouraged him to try out for a play.

David Godkin, in a 2012 interview of Greene, stated that contrary to other reports, Greene did not attend the Toronto-based Centre for Indigenous Theatre's Native Theatre School program, but rather "helped run it, as executive director of a school-supporting local arts organization." The New York Times obituary for Greene, however, states that he graduated from the Centre in 1974. By the 1970s, he began performing in professional theatre in Toronto and England and in 1976 he participated in the University of Western Ontario's touring workshop performance of James Reaney's Wacousta.

His television debut was in an episode of The Great Detective in 1979, and his film debut was in 1983 in Running Brave. On viewing his first television role, Greene stated that it was "awful", and that it prompted him to start learning to act as a profession.

Greene frequently worked at the Native Earth Performing Arts, and was well known for his performance in Dry Lips Oughta Move to Kapuskasing as the affable drunk Pierre St. Pierre. He also performed in The Crackwalker and History of the Village of the Small Huts.

At the 2007 Stratford Festival, he portrayed Shylock in The Merchant of Venice and Lennie in Of Mice and Men.