Taylor Sheridan’s Western Thriller ‘Wind River’ is Trending on Netflix: Meet the Cast
Most of the stars went onto work with Sheridan again, which we love!
Taylor Sheridan’s 2017 thriller movie Wind River recently got added to Netflix, and fans are slowly but surely becoming obsessed with it. The plot follows a wildlife officer and an FBI agent who try to investigate a murder on a Native American reservation in Wyoming. It was Sheridan’s directorial debut, and the first time he worked with actor Jeremy Renner. Below, we find out when Renner and Sheridan teamed up again and share where some of the films’ other stars are now.
Jeremy Renner as Cory Lambert
Renner is a 54-year-old actor best known for playing Clint Barton/Hawkeye in several different Marvel films. He is also in Sheridan’s TV show, Mayor of Kingstown, which debuted in 2021 and is currently working on its fourth season. In Wind River, Renner plays wildlife officer Cory Lambert, a man who works to solve the gruesome murder on the Native American reservation.
“Between the actors and then some of the families and the chiefs from the tribes on the reservation came to visit, and we got to spend time with them. There’s always information, and Taylor himself spent time on the reservation and got to share some of his experiences, and I think that shows in the picture as well,” the actor told Collider in 2017.
“He’s [Sheridan] a guy that’s very, very outspoken, but he also listens, and he doesn’t try to tell me how to do my job. He’s the first guy to say, ‘I’m never gonna tell you no.’ And so, it just gave me freedom to go explore more with the character and behavior and even dialogue. I mean, so it was very collaborative, and he … it started with trust. We both trusted each other and with Lizzy, with all his actors, and when you have trust with your writer, director, you start planting seeds of truths that happen and the real arc can generate out of that trust.”
Aside from acting, Renner has one child and recently released a memoir entitled My Next Breath: A Memoir, which centered around his snowmobiling accident.
Elizabeth Olsen as Jane Banner
Elizabeth Olsen, sister of Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen, is an American actress best known for Martha Marcy May Marlene (2011), Godzilla (2014), Ingrid Goes West (2017) and Eternity (2025). She also played Wanda Maximoff/The Scarlet Witch in several different Marvel films. In Wind River, Olsen portrays Jane Banner, an FBI agent brought in to help solve the murder.
“I’ve worked with directors whose film it’s not their first time and they don’t have the same kind of handle on the material or the crew as Taylor [Sheridan] does. You walk onto the set with Taylor, you know who’s running things, and that’s always really important in a director,” she told Collider in 2017. “The great thing about Jeremy and me is that the first day I got to work with him was on Avengers: Age of Ultron, we were in Italy. The first thing we had to do was usher 200 extras into a big ship. I was overwhelmed by the size and by the amount of stuff that wasn’t there and was talking to him about it. The only thing he was giving me as help was explaining to me about his character and his character’s family and where he’s coming from. Oddly enough, working with Jeremy in those worlds, it’s kind of the same … You end up talking about the same things, but you have more time or something like to, obviously, you explore characters differently. The story that you’re presenting to an audience is richer with character and backstory and history as opposed to trying to really quickly get in character so you can get into the next fight scene with.”
Olsen is 36 years old and married to Robbie Arnett.
Gil Birmingham as Martin Hanson
Gil Birmingham is a Native American actor who has teamed up with Sheridan several times over the years for things like Hell or High Water (2016) and Yellowstone (2018 to 2024). He was also in all five Twilight movies. In Wind River, he plays Martin Hanson, the father of the woman who was murdered.
“We are very proud to be able to tell a story that sheds light on a very sad epidemic and challenging condition that people rarely hear about. Hopefully, this story will enter the mainstream of consciousness and some positive changes can be made,” Birmingham told ICT News in 2017. “There are Native Americans in all kinds of fields, such as doctors, lawyers, justices and anything you can imagine. My character portrayed the difficulty in trying to provide a better life for your children and your family. Yet, he has to watch them be swallowed up by the conditions and disillusionment and a fractured relationship between native tribes and the government. This stems from the origins of trying to colonize us from the beginning.”
“For my character in particular, I grasped his loss synonymously with the depth of sorrow and heartbreak in the loss of our nieces, aunts, sisters and mothers, as experienced by the whole community and how they have to endure that.”
Birmingham is 72 years old and is originally from San Antonio, Texas.
Kelsey Asbille as Natalie Hanson
Kelsey Asbille is an actress best known for things like One Tree Hill (2005 to 2009), Pair of Kings (2010 to 2013), Teen Wolf (2015 to 2016) and Yellowstone (2018 to 2024). She plays Natalie Hanson in Wind River, the woman who gets murdered.
“It’s an honor for me to play on my Native side or Asian side— it’s always an honor and responsibility,” she told Women’s Wear Daily in 2017. “The film is very fortuitous with what is going on with Standing Rock, and I was very involved with that. I went up there; I tried to listen to women who were in that situation and what they went through. I wanted to make sure that there was a strength to [Natalie], even in that [pivotal] moment [of the film],” Asbille recalls. “I was very nervous beforehand, but by the end of [filming], I was very confident with how it was captured and represented.”
Asbille is 34 years old and originally from Columbia, South Carolina.
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