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, and after graduating from  Cambridge in law had shocked his family by becoming an actor. Georgiana  Drew of Philadelphia acted in her parents' 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. Though older  brother Lionel Barrymore  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.

The lure of the stage was perhaps  congenital, however. 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 she 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 Barrymore garnered in silent movies after similar chemistry on stage, she won over audiences from her first film appearance in The Nightingale  (1914). However, her early film roles, steady through 1919, took a 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 Actors Equity Association and, in fact, had been a  prominent figure in the actors strike of 1919. By 1930 she was 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.

When she passed away in 1959, she was interred near her brothers  at Calvary Cemetery in East Los Angeles.