Graham Greene died on Monday 1 September 2025, aged 73, in Ontario. His manager, Gerry Jordan, told CBC he died of natural causes; most outlets reported it as after a long illness. No specific condition was ever named. His wife, Hilary Blackmore, was with him.
They had been married 34 years and eight months.
And the story most people tell about those years has the order of events completely backwards.
Updated September 2026
How did Graham Greene die?
This is the question everyone arrives with, and the honest answer comes in two halves that don’t quite line up.
His manager, Gerry Jordan, told CBC the cause was natural causes. Variety, ICT, NBC and others reported that he died after a long illness. The family never named a condition, and nobody has since — which is their right, and worth saying rather than filling in.
Jordan’s announcement was short. “It is with deep sadness we announce the peaceful passing of award-winning legendary Canadian actor Graham Greene.”
Who was Graham Greene’s wife?
Hilary Blackmore, a Toronto theatre professional. They met in 1989 on a play called Fire at Theatre Passe Muraille, and married on 20 December 1990.
How he got her attention tells you everything about him: “I dropped a wrench on her out of the grid to get her attention, so we could finally meet.”
They exchanged vows in the Black Hills of South Dakota, near where Dances With Wolves had been shot, and registered the marriage back home at Toronto City Hall.
What did Graham Greene say about his drinking?
This is the part that gets told the wrong way round, over and over.
The usual version is a devoted wife who carried a struggling man until he finally made it. The record says almost the opposite. Greene was already Oscar-nominated and seven years married when he was hospitalised in 1997 with alcoholism and depression. The crisis came after the triumph, not before it — which is a far more frightening kind of story, and a much more common one.
He described it afterwards without a shred of self-pity.
“I dove into that well just to see how far I could go. I came out of it. Not totally destroyed, but I think as a better performer. A better person with tolerance.”
And then he worked for nearly three more decades.
What nation was Graham Greene from?
He was Oneida, born on 22 June 1952 in Ohsweken, on the Six Nations of the Grand River reserve in Ontario. He’s often described as Ojibwe, and that’s simply wrong.
Did Graham Greene win an Oscar?
He was nominated, not awarded — Best Supporting Actor at the 1991 ceremony, for Dances With Wolves, where he played the Lakota medicine man Kicking Bird.
He won plenty elsewhere, mind you. A Grammy in 2000 for Best Spoken Word Album for Children. A Gemini in 1994. The Earle Grey Lifetime Achievement Award in 2004, and a Canadian Screen Award. He was made a Member of the Order of Canada in 2015 and given a star on Canada’s Walk of Fame in 2021.
And in the final year of his life, the Governor General’s Performing Arts Award for Lifetime Artistic Achievement.
What did Graham Greene do before acting?
Almost everything else, honestly.
He worked as a draughtsman, a civil technologist, a steelworker and a welder. Then as a roadie and audio technician for Toronto bands, and later he ran a recording studio in Ancaster, Ontario. Acting found him through Native Earth Performing Arts, by which point he’d already had four or five lives.
What was Graham Greene’s last role?
He worked steadily right to the end, with more than 200 screen credits behind him. The late run alone includes Wind River in 2017, The Last of Us as Marlon in 2023, Reservation Dogs the same year, Echo as Skully in 2024, and Tulsa King.
Who survives him?
His wife Hilary Blackmore, his daughter Lilly Lazare-Greene, and his grandson Tarlo.
Lou Diamond Phillips said it as well as anyone did: “An Actor’s Actor. One of the wittiest, wiliest, warmest people I’ve ever known.”
What was Graham Greene best known for?
Kicking Bird, the Lakota medicine man in Dances With Wolves, is the one that gets named first — and the one that brought the Oscar nomination in 1991.
But the late run is the one younger audiences know him from. Wind River in 2017. Marlon in The Last of Us in 2023. Reservation Dogs the same year. Skully in Echo in 2024. Tulsa King.
More than 200 screen credits in all, across four decades, and he was working in the last year of his life.
How did Graham Greene become an actor?
Late, and sideways. He came to performance through Native Earth Performing Arts in Toronto, after a working life that had already included draughtsman, civil technologist, steelworker, welder, band roadie and recording-studio technician.
It was in Toronto theatre that he met Hilary Blackmore, on a play called Fire in 1989. He was 37 and had not yet made the film that would define him.
What was Graham Greene’s last award?
The Governor General’s Performing Arts Award for Lifetime Artistic Achievement, in 2025 — the year he died. He had been made a Member of the Order of Canada in 2015 and given a star on Canada’s Walk of Fame in 2021.
He also won a Grammy, in 2000, for Best Spoken Word Album for Children.
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