Donald Virgil Bluth (/bluːθ/ BLOOTH; born September 13, 1937) is an American filmmaker, animator, video game designer and author. He came to prominence working for Walt Disney Productions before creating his own film studio in the early 1980s. Bluth is best known for directing the animated films The Secret of NIMH, An American Tail, The Land Before Time, All Dogs Go to Heaven, and Anastasia, and for his involvement in the well-known Laserdisc game Dragon's Lair. Don Bluth Productions hired many animators away from Disney, and Bluth's films were a major competitor to Disney in the 1980s, leading up to the Disney Renaissance.

Bluth was born on September 13, 1937 in El Paso, Texas, to Emaline (née Pratt) and Virgil Roneal Bluth. His maternal grandfather was Rey Pratt from the Pratt family, and his great-grandfather Helaman Pratt was an early leader in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints as well as a grandfather of George W. Romney and great-grandfather of Mitt Romney. He is of Swedish, English, Irish, Scottish, and German descent.

As a child in El Paso, he rode his horse to the town movie theater to watch Disney films. Bluth later said, "then I'd go home and copy every Disney comic book I could find". At the age of six, his family moved to Payson, Utah, where he lived on a family farm. Bluth has stated that he and his siblings do not communicate with each other as adults. In 1954, his family moved to Santa Monica, California. Bluth attended Brigham Young University in Utah for one year, and then returned later to complete a degree in English.

After graduating high school, Bluth was hired in 1955 by Walt Disney Productions as an assistant to John Lounsbery for Sleeping Beauty. In 1957, Bluth left Disney, recalling he found the work to be "kind of boring". For two and a half years, Bluth resided in Argentina on a mission for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. He returned to the United States where he opened a local theater in Culver City, producing musicals such as The Music Man and The Sound of Music.

Bluth returned to college and earned a degree in English literature from Brigham Young University. In 1964, Bluth illustrated Affairs of the Harp, a harp maintenance manual by Samuel O Pratt, with dozens of anthropomorphic cartoon harp characters he called "Harpoons". In 1967, Bluth returned to the animation industry, and joined Filmation working on layouts for The Archie Show and Sabrina the Teenage Witch. In 1971, he returned full-time to Disney as an animation trainee. His first project was Robin Hood, in which he animated sequences of Robin Hood stealing gold from Prince John, rescuing a rabbit infant, and romancing Maid Marian near a waterfall. For Winnie the Pooh and Tigger Too, he animated Rabbit alongside John Lounsbery. During production on The Rescuers, Bluth was promoted to directing animator alongside the remaining members of Disney's Nine Old Men. He then worked as an animation director on Pete's Dragon. His last involvement with Disney was the short The Small One. Meanwhile, he produced his first independent film, Banjo the Woodpile Cat.

For The Fox and the Hound, Bluth animated several scenes of the character Widow Tweed. During production, creative differences between Bluth and studio executives had arisen concerning artistic control and animation training practices. On his 42nd birthday in 1979, Bluth resigned from the studio to establish his own animation studio, Don Bluth Productions, along with Gary Goldman, John Pomeroy, and nine fellow Disney animators. To this end, Don Bluth Productions demonstrated its ability in its first production, a short film titled Banjo the Woodpile Cat, and this led to work on an animated segment of the live-action film Xanadu. The studio's first feature-length film was The Secret of NIMH. Bluth employed 160 animators during the production and agreed to the first profit sharing contract in the animation industry. Though only a moderate success in the box office, the movie received critical acclaim. Later, with the home video release and cable showings, it became a cult classic. Nevertheless, due to the modest gross and an industry-wide animation strike, Don Bluth Productions filed for bankruptcy.

His next film would have been an animated version of the Norwegian folk tale East of the Sun and West of the Moon, but the financial resources were drawn back and it was never made. In 1983, he, Rick Dyer, Goldman, and Pomeroy started the Bluth Group and created the arcade game Dragon's Lair, an on rails game which let the player choose between simple paths for an animated-cartoon character on screen (whose adventures were played off a LaserDisc). This was followed in 1984 by Space Ace, a science-fiction game based on the same technology, but which gave the player a choice of different routes to take through the story. Bluth not only created the animation for Space Ace, but he also supplied the voice of the villain, Borf. Work on a Dragon's Lair sequel was underway when the video arcade business crashed. Bluth's studio was left without a source of income and the Bluth Group filed for bankruptcy on March 1, 1985. A sequel called Dragon's Lair II: Time Warp was made in 1991, but it was rarely seen in arcades.

An adaptation of Beauty and the Beast was also planned to be directed by Bluth in 1984, but the project was canceled by Columbia Pictures upon discovering that Walt Disney Pictures had plans for their own adaptation. In 1985, Bluth, Pomeroy, and Goldman established, with businessman Morris Sullivan, the Sullivan Bluth Studios. It initially operated from an animation facility in Van Nuys, California, but later moved to Dublin, Ireland, to take advantage of government investment and incentives. Sullivan Bluth Studios also helped boost animation as an industry within Ireland. Bluth and his colleagues taught an animation course at Ballyfermot Senior College.