Henry Brazeale Walthall (March 16, 1878 – June 17, 1936) was an American stage and film actor. He appeared as the Little Colonel in D. W. Griffith's The Birth of a Nation (1915).
Henry B. Walthall was born March 16, 1878, on a cotton plantation owned by his father in Shelby County, Alabama. His father had been a captain in the Confederate army. Walthall worked in the fields and was educated by his parents and an uncle who loaned books to him. He studied at Howard College for six months.
In 1898, during the Spanish–American War, he enlisted in the First Alabama Regiment. He contracted malaria while in camp in Jacksonville, Florida, and the war ended before he had recovered. He served 11 months, and when his regiment was discharged he returned home. Then, with $100, he left for New York to make his career on the stage. He played small parts with the Murray Hill Theater stock company. Later he became affiliated with the American Theater stock company and soon afterward joined the Providence, Rhode Island, stock company.