William Belleau
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Interview by Nolwen Cifuentes
Photography by Michael Tyrone Delaney
Styling by Audrey Brianne @ Exclusive Artists
Grooming by Cristina McLamb
We caught up with William Belleau as he got ready to head to the SAG Awards at the London Hotel in West Hollywood. With a nuanced and emotional portrayal of Henry Roan in Killers of the Flower Moon, William’s performance has landed him amongst the big players. “You go from fan on the stands to player on the field,” William told us of his recent success, “Bradley Cooper looked me in the eye [at the SAG Awards], and he said ‘You killed it, bro.’”
With 10 Oscar nominations and record-breaking nominations for Native talent — Lily Gladstone and Scott George as the first Native Americans to be nominated for Best Actress and Best Original Song — Killers of the Flower Moon is certainly making waves, and William is along for the ride. You can also catch William in MCU’s latest addition to the canon — Echo.
William speaks candidly about the ups and downs that got him to where he is now. He talks about the tough times, the lucky breaks, and how his family's unwavering belief in him helped him to persevere. From his first steps on stage to rubbing shoulders with movie legends, his story is about more than just chasing dreams — it's about seizing them and holding on tight.
I read that you watched a lot of movies as a kid.
Flashing back to my childhood, we all had these VHS collections that started to grow and swell over the years. You’d have those big Disney boxes and everything. And then you know stuff like the two taped Titanic VHS box. That was my age of cinema, it was all those VHS video rentals, Blockbuster.
I had the Titanic one too. That was an iconic VHS double set. How did all this move you into wanting to act?
I loved watching these movies and sharing laughter with my family. But at one point, it shifted from joy to feeling left out. And I was like, why am I feeling this way? And it was me realizing, oh, it’s because I want to do this. But, I didn't know how to or have anyone to tell me. I just knew that I felt something that I needed and it was hard to express or look where to go.
Right, how do you even get started in something like that?
Well, I took acting in high school. When all my buddies were signing up for woodwork and all of that stuff, I signed up for acting. I did five showings for a play called Arsenic and Old Lace. My dad went to see all five.
I remember my mom said, “Hey, there's an audition for the show called Dreamkeeper. Do you want to go try it?” And me being 19, I was so sure of myself and so naive that I said, “Sweet, I'm going to be on TV.” I remember being a little punk. We all have that little 19-year-old punk that just thinks they could take on the world, right?
My brother drove me to the audition and he had to kick me out of the car because I was too terrified to get out. There were, like, 100 natives there. I read for the part and six days later, they told me, “Yeah, you're coming out to Calgary to film.”
Oh, that’s amazing, you booked your first TV audition!
Not many actors book their first speaking audition, but that cocky little 19-year-old punk, I don't know.
He was on to something. Sometimes you need that punk in you.
He was so sure he was going to be on TV and I couldn't stop him. But, yeah, at 19, I wound up on my first set, and I was so scared. You know, seeing the camera, seeing what it all was. I was wearing a loincloth, they shaved my head into a mohawk. It was like an old-time Western kind of thing.
There was this one guy named Floyd Red Crow Westerman. He's an old native actor who was on Dances with the Wolves. I sat down and talked to him, and he told me, “you have the personality for this. You should keep doing this.” These subtle little words like that, kept me going, not knowing that it would take me twenty years from him saying that to get a Scorsese film. It was a journey after that.
I want to talk to you about that. How did you get involved with Killers of The Flower Moon? How do you go from 19-year-old punk to twenty years later, you’re working with one of the most prolific directors of all time?
I was at an actor's apartment in Montreal. We're filming a horror movie called Blood Quantum. This actor, Michael Gray, was showing me how to make cheap lunches and dinners. Like with a $2 tuna can, what you can do with that. Anyway, we’re at his house and he points to a book on a coffee table. He says, “See that book right there? You need to read that.” I'm like, “Okay, what is it?” He goes, “Martin Scorsese and Leonardo DiCaprio bought the rights for that story.” I was like, “Oh, what's it called?”— Killers of Flower Moon.
He tells me it's about the birth of the FBI. It's about these murders and everything, and about undercover natives. That sounded really cool, but I never thought I’d have a shot at it because something that high profile usually goes to a list. But I grabbed the book, I read it.
November 2020, I got an email, I remember it said code name Gray Horse. I knew exactly. I knew this was Killers of the Flower Moon because it's taking place in Gray Horse. And then I saw the characters, Ernest and William. I knew who those were. That was William Hale played by Robert De Niro and Ernest Brickhardt played by Leonardo DiCaprio. And then, in the sides, there's my character, Henry Roan. It was during the time of COVID so I couldn't go to a casting office, so it was a self-tape.
I invited my friend Michael Morrison. He produced a film I worked on called Thunderbird. I was like, “Hey, you got to come check these sides out.” He looks at the sides, and he goes, “Holy shit. This is Scorsese.” I tell him, we're not filming an audition. I told him, we know Scorsese's style, we’re going to do a film. So it was 8:00 PM, and we did take after take of this page-and-a-half dialog. And by the 20th take, I was so depleted and taxed that I remember telling Michael, “Hey, I'm not going to do anything for this last one. I'm not going to act or anything.” I sat down, and one of the key lines was, “Roy Bunch is on my wife, and if I don't get a drink, I'm going to kill him.”
I felt so depleted and so taxed, the Henry I was playing was so depleted. We saw that tape, and I was terrified to send that one in because they only wanted one tape, right? And I was like, other ones are so well acted. I'm crying, I’m crying to the heavens. I'm beating my fist down on the table. I'm doing all this acting. And then Michael was like, “I think this last one is it.” That’s the one we sent in.
I remember back in 2013, ten years before Killers of the Flower Moon, I was sitting on my breakfast table, depressed, because all I did was one short film that whole year. I didn't have any work, and I didn't know where this career was taking me. And my brother David, he comes into the room. He's my older brother. He was the bully. He just picked on me all the time. But he sits down, and he knows I have a loud quiet.
What do you mean, a loud quiet?
You know, when you’re a clown all the time, and all of a sudden, you’re just sitting at a table, quiet. When you're usually the happy one making everyone laugh, your quiet is loud. But yeah, my brother, he sits there and he has this moment. He goes, “I think you're going to work with Martin Scorsese one day.”
No way.
So, yeah, when I got the call for the movie. I callead home my mom, and I'm crying, and my mom says, “I love you. I love you.” And I told David, my brother, “You called it, man. I'm working on a Scorsese film. Like you said ten years ago.”
I could not have gotten back up without the family I've had. We have these witnesses in our family, we have these witnesses in our life who see not only the good times but the low points too. My brother was in the room for a really bad time when I was quiet. And my other brother who dragged me out of the car at my first audition. They were here for every chapter of my journey. None of them preached job security.
That’s amazing that you had such a supportive family. They never told you to “get a real job” or anything.
No, no one ever said, like, maybe you should get a logging job, make a lot more money. My dad wanted to break that cycle. He wanted to be a fighter pilot, but they didn't want an Indian in the airplane. So his dad just picked him up and brought him home. To this day, my dad says there were six other bases we could have tried.
Right, they just gave up on him too fast.
When we talk about support, I remember seeing a werewolf on TV. This is right after acting school at my mom’s house. And I saw this werewolf and I told my mom “I’m going to play a werewolf.” I remember she was doing the dishes, she stopped and she said “Son, I accept you as a werewolf. When you're done, I want my son back.” And, lo and behold, it must have been like a year later, two years later, I was a werewolf [in The Twilight Saga: Eclipse].
What kind of advice would you give native, first-nation, or just any young actor trying to make this into a career?
Who you are right now is perfect. You're free to upgrade yourself 1% every day, which I have done for twenty years. When you get in that room with these big iconic actors, you find out that you're in a room with all these skinny little kids in high school. They're all just a bunch of little nerds in there.
I asked De Niro “When did you get a sense of belonging to all this?” And he said, “You don't ever really.” So if you don't have a sense of belonging, that's perfect because we actors in the story, we don't belong. De Niro, he’s been doing this for years and years and years, and he embraces his non-belonging. And you can either reject it, make excuses, and say, “I'm not as pretty, or, I don't have a six-pack like this actor,” or you can allow it and say, “I can do it.”
And that’s the other thing. I am always just earning a mountain to climb. There is no end. All there is is the opportunity to work and try. That's all this is, is earning the privilege to climb the next mountain.
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