Norton was born in Islington in London, England, on August 11, 1868, as Harry Edgar Mills, one of eight children of Jane Anne née Fleming and Frederic Mills, a clerk in the Home Office department of the Civil Service.

[1][2] Norton was active on both stage and screen, his theater performances were on both the London and Broadway stages,[3] and his film career spanned both the silent and "talkie" eras in Hollywood.

[6] Norton moved permanently to the United States in 1889, and was naturalised as an American citizen in 1927.

He married his Detroit-born wife Lillian Mable née Hubbard in Ontario in Canada in 1890, and with her had a son, Edgar Norton Mills.

[7] He died in the Woodland Hills section of Los Angeles in February 1953.