Edwin Thomas Booth (November 13, 1833 – June 7, 1893) was an American stage actor and theatrical manager who toured throughout the United States and the major capitals of Europe, performing Shakespearean plays. In 1869, he founded Booth's Theatre in New York. He is considered by many to be the greatest American actor of the 19th century. However, his achievements are often overshadowed in modern discourse by his relationship with his younger brother, actor John Wilkes Booth, who assassinated the 16th president of the United States, Abraham Lincoln.

Booth was born in Bel Air, Maryland, into the Anglo-American theatrical Booth family. He was the son of the famous actor Junius Brutus Booth, an Englishman, and his mistress (later wife) Mary Ann Holmes. He was named after Edwin Forrest and Thomas Flynn, two of Junius' colleagues. He was the younger brother of Junius Brutus Booth Jr. and the elder brother of John Wilkes Booth.

Nora Titone, in her book My Thoughts Be Bloody, recounts how the shame and ambition of Junius Brutus Booth's three actor sons, Junius Jr. (who never achieved the level of stardom of his younger brothers), Edwin, and John Wilkes, spurred them to strive, as rivals, for achievement and acclaim. Politically Edwin was a Unionist; John supported the Confederacy and later became notorious as the assassin of President Abraham Lincoln.

Junius Brutus Booth was "famously peculiar ... . Several sons succeeded him in his career ... and his idiosyncrasies: Edwin had an abiding fear of ivy vines and peacock feathers."

In early appearances, Booth usually performed alongside his father, making his stage debut as Tressel or Tressil in Colley Cibber's version of Richard III in Boston on September 10, 1849. His first appearance in New York City was in the character of Wilford in The Iron Chest, which he played at the National Theatre in Chatham Street, on September 27, 1850. A year later, on the illness of the father, the son took his place in the character of Richard III.

After his father's death in 1852, Booth went on a worldwide tour, visiting Australia and Hawaii, and finally gaining acclaim of his own during an engagement in Sacramento, California, in 1856.

Before his brother assassinated Lincoln, Edwin had appeared with his two brothers, John Wilkes and Junius Brutus Booth Jr., in Julius Caesar in 1864. John Wilkes played Marc Antony, Edwin played Brutus, and Junius played Cassius. It was a benefit performance, and the only time that the three brothers appeared together on the same stage. The funds were used to erect a statue of William Shakespeare that still stands in Central Park just south of the Promenade. Immediately afterwards, Edwin Booth began a production of Hamlet on the same stage, which came to be known as the "hundred nights Hamlet", setting a record that lasted until John Barrymore broke the record in 1922, playing the title character for 101 performances.

From 1863 to 1867, Booth managed the Winter Garden Theatre in New York City, mostly staging Shakespearean tragedies. In 1863, he bought the Walnut Street Theatre in Philadelphia.