James Otis Barrows (March 29, 1855 - December 7, 1925)^[2] was an American stage and film actor. He spent much of his adult life in the legitimate theater from the Victorian to Edwardian to Georgian eras.^[3]

Barrows debuted "as a super" at the California Theatre in San Francisco, after which he acted with a touring stock company in the Northwest before returning to San Francisco to act in stock productions at the Baldwin Theatre and the Grand Opera House. Later, he acted in Boston with the Castle Square Theatre's stock company before partnering with John Lancaster and moving into vaudeville to do dramatic sketches.^[4] He spent half a dozen years in vaudeville.^[5] In 1919 he began appearing in silent feature films playing elderly roles much like theater colleagues of his generation i.e. Melbourne MacDowell, Ida Waterman, Joseph J. Dowling, Frank Currier and Theodore Roberts. Barrows can be seen in several surviving silent films, his last being the 1926 John Barrymore starrer The Sea Beast completed just before his death.^[6]