Sturgill Simpson is continuing to dip his foot into Hollywood. The country singer, whose 2016 album A Sailor’s Guide to Earth won the Best Country Album Grammy, can currently be seen portraying Henry Grammer in director Martin Scorsese’s star-studded epic revisionist Western crime drama Killers of the Flower Moon, which hit theaters on Oct. 20.
Based on David Grann’s 2017 nonfiction book of the same name and written by Scorsese and Eric Roth, Killers of the Flower Moon is set in 1920s Oklahoma when several members of the Osage Nation were killed during what is known as the “Reign of Terror.” The murders happened shortly after oil was discovered under their land, and the Osage were not used to the sudden wealth coming their way.
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In the film, Simpson portrays Grammer, an American cowboy and bootlegger who was a perpetrator of the Osage Indian murders. The all-star cast also includes Leonardo DiCaprio as Ernest Burkhart, Lily Gladstone as Mollie Burkhart, an Osage woman who falls in love with Ernest, and Robert De Niro as rancher William Hale, as well as Jesse Plemons, Jason Isbell, Sturgill Simpson, JaNae Collins, Tantoo Cardinal, and Cara Jade Myers.
Killers is Scorsese’s seventh movie with DiCaprio and 11th with De Niro. The film hit theaters on Oct. 20, years after Scorcese first began working on it. During its opening weekend, the movie debuted in North America with $23 million, per The Guardian. While that number made it the third best opening for Scorsese, following Shutter Island ($41m in 2010) and The Departed ($26.9m in 2006), it was not high enough to beat Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour, which took in an estimated $31m over the weekend.
Killers of the Flower Moon is just the latest acting credit for Simpson. The musician previously in the drama Queen and Slim in 2019, that same year appearing in Jim Jarmusch’s zombie flick The Dead Don’t Die, for which he also wrote and performed the theme song. His other acting credits include One Dollar, The Hunt, and Materna, among others. Along with Killers, his most recent credits include appearing in three episodes of The Righteous Gemstones and an appearance on The Creator.
Simpson is a celebrated country music singer-songwriter with seven albums under his belt. His first two albums, High Top Mountain and Metamodern Sounds in Country Music, were independently released in 2013 and 2014. He released his third album, A Sailor’s Guide to Earth, via Atlantic Records in 2016. The album won Best Country Album at the 59th Grammy Awards and was also nominated for Album of the Year. His most recent album, The Ballad of Dood and Juanita, was released in August 2021.
