Graham Greene
Actor
(b. June 22, 1952 Six Nations Reserve, Brantford, Ontario)
A poised, low-key character actor with an open, inquisitive face and an uncommon intensity, Graham Greene has contributed strong performances to numerous films in Canada and the United States and has appeared in many television series, but is perhaps best known for his Academy Award®-nominated performance in Kevin Costner’s Dances with Wolves (1990).
Though he was a good student and has described his childhood as pleasant, Greene dropped out of school when he was sixteen and moved on his own to Rochester, New York, where he worked in a warehouse. At eighteen, he took a welding course at George Brown College in Toronto and got a job in Hamilton making railroad cars. In the early seventies, while working as a roadie and sound engineer for rock bands, Greene was encouraged by his colleagues to pursue acting. He was largely indifferent to the idea until a friend challenged him to a bet – they cut a deck of cards; Greene lost, and was off to acting classes at The Centre for Indigenous Theatre’s Native Theatre School, from which he graduated in 1974. Later that same year, a small theatre group in Toronto invited him to join them, and he made his first appearance on stage.
Greene worked for many years as a supporting actor on stage and screen, landing bit parts in such TV movies as the CBC production Riel. After receiving the Dora Mavor Moore Award for his starring role in Thomson Highway’s play Dry Lips Oughta Move to Kapuskasing, he worked on the stage in London, England for a few years, then returned to Canada in the mid-eighties and scored supporting roles in Running Brave (1983), Revolution (1985) and Pow-Wow Highway (1988).
The tremendous success of Dances with Wolves led Greene to frequent appearances and several recurring roles on TV, generally playing positive, quietly dignified characters on series such as “L.A. Law,” “Northern Exposure” and “Murder, She Wrote.” He gave an astonishing performance in Richard Bugajski’s seldom seen Clearcut (1991), appeared to good effect as the sole survivor of the Yahi nation in the Cable TV movie The Last of His Tribe (1992) opposite Jon Voigt, and turned in a superb performance as a laconic reservation cop who teaches Val Kilmer’s rookie FBI agent a thing or two in the sober environmental thriller Thunderheart (1992). He also appeared with Mel Gibson and Jodie Foster in Maverick (1994), supported Jessica Tandy and Bridget Fonda in Deepa Mehta’s Camilla (1994) and nailed one of his many roles as a police officer in Die Hard: With a Vengeance (1995).
A full-blooded member of the Oneida nation, Greene has become a positive role model and has proved that there is a place for Native actors in North American cinema, but he admits to being raised without much sense of his heritage, language or customs and considers himself neither a spokesperson for Native rights nor a trailblazer. Instead, he sees himself simply as an actor capable of playing any role that comes his way. More recently, he has taken an active interest in his people and their traditions.
In 1997, he suffered a major depressive attack and had to be hospitalized after a standoff with police at his home in Toronto. He emerged from the incident in good health and continued to appear in television series such as “The Red Green Show” and A-list Hollywood films such as The Green Mile (1999). Also in 1997, Greene received a National Aboriginal Achievement Award for his work in film and television. Greene was awarded the Lifetime Achievement Award by the Southwest Museum in Los Angeles in 1992, and received the Academy of Canadian Cinema & Television’s prestigious Earle Grey Award in 2004.
The winner of two Gemini Awards for his role as Mr. Crabby Tree in the children’s series “Dudley the Dragon,” Greene remains active in the Toronto theatre community, where he has appeared in over a dozen productions.
Film and video work includes
Spirit of Adventure, 1979 (actor; TV)
Running Brave, 1983 (actor)
Spirit Bay, 1984 (actor; TV)
Revolution, 1985 (actor)
Adderly series, 1986 (actor; TV, one episode)
First Nation Blue, 1996 (narrator; TV)
Murder Sees the Light, 1986 (actor; TV)
Captain Power and the Soldiers of the Future series, 1987 (actor; TV, one episode)
Street Legal series, 1987 (actor; TV, Tango Bellarosa episode)
9B, 1988 (actor; TV)
Powwow Highway, 1989 (actor)
Where the Spirit Lives, 1989 (actor)
Dances with Wolves, 1990 (actor)
Lost in the Barrens, 1990 (actor; TV)
The Pathfinder, 1990 (actor)
L.A. Law series, 1991 (actor; TV, one episode)
The Red Green Show, 1991 (actor; TV)
The Last of His Tribe, 1992 (actor; TV)
Murder She Wrote series, 1992 (actor; TV, one episode)
Northern Exposure series, 1992-1993 (actor; TV, five episodes)
The Path Ahead, 1992 (host; TV)
Rain without Thunder, 1992 (actor)
Thunderheart, 1992 (actor)
The War Against the Indians, 1992 (appears s himself; TV)
Benefit of the Doubt, 1993 (actor)
The Broken Chain, 1993 (actor, TV)
Cooperstown, 1993 (actor; TV)
Medicine River, 1993 (actor; TV)
Spirit Rider, 1993 (actor; TV)
Huck and the King of Hearts, 1994 (actor)
The Adventures of Dudley the Dragon, 1994 (actor; TV)
Camilla, 1994 (actor)
Lonesome Dove: The Series, 1994 (actor; TV, two episodes)
Murder She Wrote series, 1994 (actor; TV, one episode)
Rugged Gold, 1994 (actor; TV)
Maverick, 1994 (actor)
North, 1994 (actor)
Royal Canadian Air Farce series, 1994 (actor; TV, one episode)
Savage Land, 1994 (actor)
500 Nations, 1994 (actor; TV)
Die Hard: With a Vengeance, aka Die Hard 3, 1995 (actor)
Heritage Minutes: Proud and Free, 1995 (actor)
Liberty Street series, 1995 (actor; TV, one episode)
The Way West, 1995 (voice; TV)
Dead Innocent, aka Eye, 1996 (actor)
The Outer Limits series, 1996 (actor; TV, one episode)
The Pathfinder, 1996 (actor;TV)
Poltergeist: The Legacy series, 1996 (actor; TV, one episode)
Sabotage, 1996 (actor)
Snow White, 1996 (voice)
Dead Man's Gun series, 1997 (actor; TV, one episode)
The Education of Little Tree, 1997 (actor)
Exhibit A, 1997 (narrator; TV)
The Hired Heart, 1997 (actor; TV)
Song of Hiawatha, 1997 (actor)
Wounded, 1997 (actor)
Heart of the Sun, 1998 (actor)
The Herd, 1998 (voice)
PSI Factor: chronicles of the Paranormal series, 1998 (actor; TV, one episode)
Shattered Image, 1998 (actor)
Stranger in Town, 1998 (actor; TV)
Terminal City, 1998 (host; TV)
Bad Money, 1999 (actor)
First Wave series, 1999 (actor; TV, one episode)
The Green mile, aka Stephen King's The Green Mile, 1999 (actor)
Grey Owl, 1999 (actor)
Misery Harbour, 1999 (actor)
Royal Canadian Air Farce series, 1999 (actor; TV, one episode)
Shadow Lake, 1999 (actor; TV)
Big Wolf on Campus series, 2000 (actor; TV, one episode)
Cover Me: Based on the True Life of an FBI Family, aka Cover Me, 2000 (actor; TV)
Desire, 2000 (actor)
Trail by Fire, 2000 (actor; TV)
Touched, 2000 (actor)
Christmas in the Clouds, 2001 (actor)
Lost and Delirious, 2001 (actor)
Royal Canadian Air Farce series, 2001 (actor; TV, one episode)
Science Highway, 2001 (narrator)
Wolf Lake, 2001 (actor; TV)
Duct Tape Forever, aka Red Green's Duct Tape Forever, 2002 (actor)
The New Beachcombers, 2002 (actor; TV)
Punch & Judy, 2002 (actor)
Rocket Science, 2002 (narrator; TV)
Skins, 2002 (actor)
Snow Dogs, 2002 (actor)
Big Spender, 2003 (actor; TV)
Mister Sterling series, 2003 (actor; TV, one episode)
Shattered City: The Halifax Explosion, 2003 (actor; TV)
A Thief of Time, 2003 (actor)
A Beachcombers Christmas, 2004 (actor; TV)
Coyote Waits, 2004 (actor)
Phil the Alien, 2004 (actor)
Buffalo Dreams, 2005 (actor; TV)
Into the West, 2005 (actor; TV)
The Spirit Bear: The Simon Jackson Story, 2005 (actor)
Transamerica, 2005 (actor)
When I Find the Ocean, 2005 (actor)