When actor Graham Greene got the call that he'd won a Governor General's Award, he thought it was a prank

With a dry sense of humour and a penchant for teasing, it's no wonder that acclaimed actor Graham Greene believed his own friends were pranking him when he got the call from someone with the Governor General's Performing Arts Awards letting him know he'd be receiving a Lifetime Artistic Achievement Award.

"'Yeah, yeah, who is it?'" he recalls saying. "I found out it was true, and I said, 'Oh my gosh, I'm terribly sorry, I thought it was some friends playing a joke.' The same thing happened when I got the Order of Canada, I thought somebody was pulling my leg."

The 72-year-old actor will be receiving the honour for his vast body of work in stage and screen, which includes unforgettable portrayals of chiefs, medicine men, doctors, a judge (Molly's Game), a detective (Die Hard with a Vengeance) and a death row inmate (The Green Mile). For his performance as Kicking Bird, a Sioux medicine man in the 1990 film Dances with Wolves, he earned an Academy Award nomination. 

Often playing specifically Indigenous characters, and frequently speaking languages and representing tribes and nations not his own (he's Oneida from the Six Nations of the Grand River), Greene is one of the most recognizable Indigenous actors in North America. 

"It's wonderful to be recognized in your own country, and I'm grateful for that," he says. "I'm just a working actor and I'm lucky enough to survive as long as I did in the business. There's a lot of better actors that have not survived and there's some that are still active that never got any recognition, which is unfortunate."

His four decades of acting all stemmed from Greene's fascination with human behaviour when he was a sound engineer for bands. He'd sit behind the sound console and watch the crowds instead of the band. "I just picked somebody and started asking questions and making things up about them."

Filling in a character's backstory came naturally to him in film, but he wanted to bring more confidence to his acting, so he did theatre to develop discipline and learn "how to dance," as he calls ad-libbing. Some of his favourite "dance partners" have been Felicity Huffman and Mel Gibson, from Transamerica and Maverick, respectively.

Actors Graham Greene and Tantoo Cardinal

5 days ago

Duration 5:33

Two Canadian actors discuss what it was like to work with Hollywood's Kevin Costner in the 1990 movie Dances with Wolves.

Despite announcing his retirement from acting, he says he gets more calls than ever. He tells his agent to send only the good stuff, and his requirements include working four days or less, very little dialogue and "a lot of money." 

Acclaimed television series The Last of Us and Reservation Dogs must have fit the criteria, as Greene made notable appearances in both in recent years. 

Sometimes, a little convincing brings him into the fold. The 2024 thriller/comedy Seeds was written specifically for Greene by the film's writer, director and star, Kaniehtiio Horn. "She says, 'I wrote a role for you, and you better do it.' I said, 'Well, I guess I better.'"

Seeds is the closing night film of imagineNATIVE Film Festival, where Greene will receive another lifetime award, the August Schellenberg Award of Excellence.

"I think they're trying to tell me something with all these lifetime achievement awards," he says. And what does he think that might be? "That I'm dead," he quips.