Dances With Wolves Actor Dead at 73

Graham Greene, a Canadian First Nations actor who fell into acting in the 1970s and had a Hollywood breakout role in Dances With Wolves, has died at age 73. Greene died in a Toronto hospital after a long illness. While working as a recording engineer, he started acting after a friend asked him to read his script, the Guardian reports. After performing in both Canadian and English stage productions in the 1970s, he made his smallscreen debut in 1979 in The Great Detective, a Canadian drama. His bigscreen debut came four years later in Running Brave. But it was after Kevin Costner cast him as real-life Lakota Sioux medicine man Kicking Bird in the Oscar-winning 1990 Western that his Hollywood career truly began—a career that ultimately opened doors for other indigenous actors, Deadline reports.

He appeared in films including 1992's Thunderheart, 1994's Maverick, 1995's Die Hard with a Vengeance, 1999's The Green Mile, 2005's Transamerica, 2009's The Twilight Saga: New Moon, and 2017's Molly's Game and Wind River. He also appeared in TV series including 1883, Tulsa King, The Last of Us, and Reservation Dogs. The multiple award-winning actor, who has a star on Canada's Walk of Fame, continued working until near the end of his life, with several projects as yet unreleased. "He was a great man of morals, ethics, and character and will be eternally missed," Greene's agent said in a statement. "You are finally free." Referencing Greene's longtime previous agent, who died in 2013, he added, "Susan Smith is meeting you at the gates of heaven."