FORBES-ROBERTSON, SIR JOHNSTON English actor, was born on Jan. 16, 1853, the son of John Forbes Robertson of Aberdeen, an art critic. He was educated at Charter house, and studied at the Royal Academy schools, but in 1874 he turned to the theatre, making his first appearance in London as Chastelard, in Mary, Queen of Scots. He studied under Samuel Phelps, played with the Bancrofts and with John Hare, supported Miss Mary Anderson both in England and America, and acted at different times with Sir Henry Irving. In Pinero's The Profligate at the Garrick theatre (1889), under Hare's management, he made a great name for himself. In 1895 he started under his own man agement at the Lyceum with Mrs. Patrick Campbell, producing Romeo and Juliet, Hamlet, Macbeth, and also some modern plays, among these being John Davidson's For the Crown and Maeter linck's Pelleas and Melisande, in both of which he found parts ad mirably suited to his romantic temperament. In 1900 he married Gertrude Elliott, with whom he appeared at various theatres, pro ducing in subsequent years The Light that Failed, Madeleine Lucette Riley's Mice and Men, and G. Bernard Shaw's Caesar and Cleopatra, Jerome K. Jerome's Passing of the Third Floor Back, etc. He was knighted in 1913, and made a farewell tour of Canada and America before finally retiring from the stage in 1915.
See Sir J. A Player Under Three Reigns (1925) .