Charles Robert Starrett (March 28, 1903 – March 22, 1986) was an American actor, best known for his starring role in the Durango Kid westerns. Starrett still holds the record for starring in the longest series of theatrical features: 131 westerns, all produced by Columbia Pictures.

Starrett was born in Athol, Massachusetts, where his grandfather had built a prosperous tool works, L. S. Starrett Company. He graduated from the Worcester Academy in Massachusetts in 1922, then from Dartmouth College.

While Starrett was on the Dartmouth football team he was hired to play a football extra in the film The Quarterback (1926). Bitten by the acting bug, Starrett played minor roles in films and leading roles in stage plays. In 1928, he was a member of the Walker Company, a repertory theatre troupe headed by Stuart Walker.

He was signed by Paramount Pictures to a movie contract, and played the romantic lead in his first picture, Fast and Loose (1930), starring Frank Morgan, Miriam Hopkins, and Carole Lombard. Starrett starred in the Canadian production The Viking (1931), a rugged outdoor adventure filmed on location in Newfoundland, which had begun as a Paramount project.

Starrett was very active for the next two years, playing juvenile leads for both major and minor studios. He was featured in Our Betters (1933), Murder on the Campus (1933), and as a young doctor named Orion in "Along Came Love", opposite Irene Hervey. Of Starrett's early character appearances, today's viewers may be most familiar with the Will Rogers picture Mr. Skitch (1933), featuring Starrett as the romantic lead.

Offscreen, Charles Starrett helped organize the Screen Actors Guild. He held membership card #10.

In 1935, Columbia Pictures wanted to replace its incumbent western star Tim McCoy with a younger actor. Starrett heard about this and interviewed with Columbia producers. Starrett recalled that studio chief Harry Cohn was indifferent, caring about only one thing: "Can he ride a horse?" Starrett could, and got the job. His first western was Gallant Defender (1935). Starrett ultimately signed four contracts with Columbia, becoming the studio's number-one cowboy star. He cast an appealing figure with his tall stature (6' 2"), strong jawline, confident voice, and air of quiet authority.

Starrett hadn't planned on making an entire career out of westerns, and agreed to make them for two years, with the understanding that his bosses would then cast him in plainclothes roles. When they didn't, he walked out on his contract after the two years. "I sat out the waltz one year, thinking I'd like to make a change from westerns. That waltz cost me $60,000 [the dollar value of his original agreement]. But you know when you're raising a family -- I had two young boys, twins -- you can't always do what you want to do... And I think an actor's life is very much like an athlete's. It's youth. You've got to make it while you can. So after that year, I went back and went along with it." Theater exhibitors around the world were attracting big crowds with Charles Starrett westerns, so Columbia gave him a new contract with the actor insisting on appearing in a non-western. He finally got his chance—once—in 1937, for the collegiate musical comedy Start Cheering (released 1938). In a curious reflection of his own situation, Starrett played a disenchanted movie hero who wanted to do something different with his life. But Starrett's success in westerns established him firmly in outdoor fare and sealed his fate professionally. For the rest of his career he made Columbia westerns exclusively.