Green Mile and Dances With Wolves actor Graham Greene dies aged 73

Canadian Greene, who was of the Oneida tribe, took up acting in the 1970s and often played Native American characters in Hollywood films. More recently, he has had roles in television series including Tulsa King and 1883.

His friend and fellow actor Gil Birmingham said: “We have lost a man of incredible talent who made a positive impact on Native representation in film, inspiring a new generation of Native actors.”

Greene has 188 screen credits to his name and achieved his mainstream breakthrough in 1990 with his turn as Kicking Bird in Dances With Wolves, for which he was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor.

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Last year, he said in an interview that he wanted the Oneida people, a tribe native to Canada, to be recognised for their humour.

“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 died on Monday after a short illness leaves behind his wife of 35 years Hilary Blackmore - with whom he lived outside Toronto in Canada with a “small array of cats”.

Graham Greene’s best known roles

These are his best-known roles, according to IMDB.

• Dances With Wolves (1990),
• 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),
• Wind River (2017)