Born in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. He studied engineering but was drawn to the stage and joined a road show. By 1905 he was quite successful in vaudeville and was even cast in a New York play, but after his marriage that year (to newspaper-woman Rhea Gore) and the birth of his son John (director-to-be John Huston) in 1906, he decided to meet his responsibilities as a husband and father by abandoning the stage and working as an engineer at water and electrical plants in Nevada and then St. Louis, Missouri. However, he returned to the stage in 1909 and soon became a popular headliner in the vaudeville circuit. In 1913 he divorced and later married twice more. In 1924 he switched to drama and starred in the Broadway plays Mr. Pitt and Desire Under the Elms; then, in 1929, he joined the mass exodus of Broadway players to the movies, which were just then switching to sound. In his mid-40s by the time he crossed to films, Huston was nonetheless cast in some romantic leads as well as character parts and received enthusiastic press notices for his portrayal of the title role in D.W. Griffith's ABRAHAM LINCOLN (1930). After becoming a film actor, he occasionally returned to Broadway, where he scored personal triumphs in Dodsworth, a role he later repeated on the screen, and Knickerbocker Holiday in which he gave his now-famous rendition of "September Song." The New York Film Critics voted Huston best actor of 1936 for his performance in the screen version of DODSWORTH (1936). He received even greater accolades for his portrayal of the Devil in THE DEVIL AND DANIEL WEBSTER (1941)/ALL THAT MONEY CAN BUY, a delightful screen adaptation of Benét's The Devil and Daniel Webster. Other memorable characterizations followed, culminating in his superb performance in his son John's THE TREASURE OF THE SIERRA MADRE, for which he won the best supporting actor Academy Award for 1948.  Nominated for Actor 1936: DODSWORTH  Nominated for Actor 1941: THE DEVIL AND DANIEL WEBSTER (a.k.a. ALL THAT MONEY CAN BUY)  Nominated for Supporting Actor 1942: YANKEE DOODLE DANDY  Supporting Actor 1948: THE TREASURE OF THE SIERRA MADRE 4 nominations, 1 Award