Sir Johnston Forbes-Robertson (16 January 1853 – 6 November 1937) was an English actor and theatre manager. He was considered the finest Hamlet of the nineteenth century and one of the finest actors of his time, despite his dislike of the job and his lifelong belief that he was temperamentally unsuited to acting.

Biography

In 1900, at age 47, he married American-born actress Gertrude Elliott (1874–1950), sister of Maxine Elliott, with whom he had four daughters. Their first daughter was Maxine Forbes-Robertson known as 'Blossom', who married the aircraft designer F.G. Miles and became a director and designer of the Miles Aircraft company. She previously married Inigo Brassey Freeman-Thomas, 2nd Marquess of Willingdon in 1924 and divorced in 1932. Their second daughter Jean Forbes-Robertson became an accomplished actress. Their third daughter was Chloe Forbes-Robertson (1909–1947), an artist. Diana Forbes-Robertson (1914–1988), their fourth daughter, was a writer who later wrote a biography of her aunt Maxine Elliott. Through his daughter Jean he is the grandfather of actress Joanna Van Gyseghem. Johnston Forbes-Robertson was knighted in 1913 at the age of 60.

In the last years of his life he produced plays by George Bernard Shaw and Jerome K. Jerome. His literary works include: The Life and Life-Work of Samuel Phelps (actor and theatre manager) as well as his own autobiography Johnston Forbes-Robertson: A Player Under Three Reigns (1925).

A statue of Forbes-Robertson by Brenda Putnam (1932) can be found at the Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington D.C..

The Great Painters of Christendom From Cimabue to Wilkie was written by his father, John Forbes-Robertson. see: The New York Times

In 1937 (age 84), he died on 6 November in St. Margaret's Bay, near Dover, England, UK.