Punk rock icon, author, and artist Patti Smith attended the National Board of Review Gala in New York City on Thursday (January 11). She gave a speech to honor Killers of the Flower Moon star Lily Gladstone. Additionally, it was Smith’s first public appearance of 2024. She played a handful of concerts in late December after being suddenly hospitalized earlier in the month.
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The National Board of Review Gala honors the best in film of the past year. A group of film critics, filmmakers, academics, and enthusiasts decide the awards. Smith was there to present the Best Actress award to Gladstone for her role in Martin Scorsese’s adaptation of David Grann’s 2017 book Killers of the Flower Moon: The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI.
This is the latest honor Gladstone has received from her role in the film. Gladstone grew up on the Blackfeet Reservation in Browning, Montana. She is of mixed Nez Perce, Piegan Blackfeet, and white ancestry. Last week, she became the first indigenous person to win the Golden Globe for Best Actress in a Motion Picture—Drama.
Patti Smith Honors Lily Gladstone in Moving Speech
Smith found herself mildly uncomfortable in front of the crowd of A-listers, according to People. “There’s a lot of you here,” she began. Then, she added, “It’s a lot easier playing Madison Square Garden but I’m very excited to be here.” After hitting her stride, Smith spoke about Killers of the Flower Moon and Gladstone’s performance.
“It pierces the vein of human weakness, greed, cowardice, and betrayal,” she said of the film. “And what is more piercing than the face of Lily Gladstone as the camera captures the shifting tones of her interior process seamlessly embodying the courageous Mollie Burkhart?”
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“As Mollie, Lily’s sense of the space around and the rushing energy of her own blood can be felt in every gesture, every side glance, in the lift of her head, in the folding of her hands, in the burgeoning illness that can be felt cell by cell that mirrors the afflictions imposed on her people coupled with her stamina to love, to heal, and quietly condemn,” Smith said. “Courage, humor, intelligence, her mysterious smile, her earthly sensuality, she drew from the many aspects of herself investing them within her spiritual sister, the Osage woman, Mollie Burkhart with steely determination, dignity, and grace.”
Photo by Dimitrios Kambouris/Getty Images for National Board of Review
