Ethel Barrymore was the second of three children seemingly destined for the actor's life of their parents Maurice and Georgiana. Maurice Barrymore had emigrated from England in 1875, where after graduating from Cambridge in law had shocked his family by becoming an actor. Georgiana Drew of Philadelphia acted in her parent's stage company. The two met and married as members of Augustin Daly's company in New York. They both acted with some of the great stage personalities of the mid Victorian theater of America and England. The Barrymore children were born and grew up in Philadelphia. And though older brother Lionel began acting early with his mother's relatives in the Drew theater company, Ethel, after a traditional girl's schooling, planned on becoming a concert pianist.

But the lure of the stage was perhaps congenital. She made her debut as a stage actress during the New York City season of 1894. Her youthful stage presence was at once a pleasure - a strikingly pretty and winsome face and large dark eyes that seemed to look out from her very soul. Her natural talent and distinctive voice only reinforced the physical presence of someone destined to command any role set before her. After the opportunity to appear on the London stage with English great Henry Irving in The Bells (1897) and later in Peter the Great (1898), she returned to New York to star in the Clyde Fitch play Captain Jinks of the Horse Marines (1901) (produced by her friend and benefactor Charles Frohman) which brought her initial American acclaim. Lead roles, such as Nora in Henrik Ibsen's A Doll's House (1905) and starring in Alice By the Fire (also 1905), Mid-Channel (1910), and Trelawney of the Wells (1911) proved her popularity as a warm and charismatic star of American stage. In the meantime married stockbroker Russell Griswold Colt in 1909 and gave birth to three children while continuing her acting career.

Although the stage was her first love, she did heed the call of the silver screen, and though not achieving the matinée idol image that younger brother John garnered in silent movies after similar chemistry on stage, she won over audiences from her first film appearance in The Nightingale. However, her early film roles, steady through 1919, took back seat to continued stage triumphs: Declassee (1919), her impassioned Juliet in Romeo and Juliet (1922), The Second Mrs. Tanqueray (1924), and especially The Constant Wife (1926).

She harnessed her considerable talents in the role of an activist as well, being a bedrock supporter of the Actor's Equity Association, and, in fact, had been a prominent figure in the actors strike of 1919. By 1930 she was inevitably entering middle age and her movie roles reflected this. Except for Rasputin and the Empress (1932) with her brothers, the roles were elderly mothers and grandmothers, dowager ladies, and spinster aunts. Perhaps wisely she put off Hollywood for over a decade with stage work that included her most endearing role in The Corn is Green (a tour that lasted from 1940 to 1942). She finally moved to Southern California in 1940.

Yet the consummate actress glowed still in the films that came steadily in the mid 1940s and through much of the 50s. As the mother of Cary Grant in the pensive None But the Lonely Heart she started off her late film career brilliantly by receiving the Oscar for Best Actress, though she was not satisfied with that effort. Her engaging wit and humanity stood out in even supporting roles, such as, the politically savvy mother of Joseph Cotten in The Farmer's Daughter and, once again with Cotton, as sympathetic art dealer Miss Spinney-with those eyes - in the haunting screen adaptation of Robert Nathan's novel Portrait of Jennie. There was also a mingling of some TV work to round out her last movies in the late 50s. In 1955 she saw her book Memories, An Autobiography through publication. For the enduring legacy she had already begun years before, a theater named for her was dedicated in New York in 1928. When she passed away in 1959, she was interred near her brothers at Calvary Cemetery in East Los Angeles.
Rasputin and the Empress (1932): $57,500
Life's Whirlpool (1917): $40,000
The Awakening of Helena Ritchie (1916): $40,000
The Nightingale (1914): $15,000

The three Barrymore siblings appeared in only one film together: Rasputin and the Empress. A decade after John's demise, Lionel and Ethel appeared in Main Street to Broadway, which incidentally was Lionel's last film. Screen, stage, and television actress. Mother of Samuel Colt, Ethel Colt, and John Drew Colt. Great-aunt of Drew Barrymore. Turned down a marriage proposal from Winston Churchill. Raised Roman Catholic (along with her brothers) after her mother converted to R.C. under the influence of the legendary Polish thespian, Helena Modjeweska. Ethel was the only sibling to remain devout, and she never remarried after her divorce. Daughter of Maurice Barrymore and Georgiana Barrymore; grand-daughter of Louisa Drew and stage actor John Drew (1827-62); niece of Sidney Drew; cousin of S. Rankin Drew. Aunt of John Drew Barrymore. In 1951, she accepted the Oscar for "Best Actress in a Leading Role" on behalf of Judy Holliday, who wasn't present at the awards ceremony In her most important films her character was often that of a sick woman, sometimes in bed about to die. She and her brother Lionel Barrymore were the first Oscar-winning brother and sister