John Stanton (born 28 October 1944) is an Australian stage, film and television actor.
Stanton was born in Brisbane, Queensland. He attended Brisbane Grammar School for his secondary education where he was a prolific runner and swimmer.
Stanton moved to Melbourne to further his career. He played the major supporting role of Peter Handcock (to Terence Donovan's leading role of Breaker Morant) in the first public performance of Kenneth G. Ross's play Breaker Morant: A Play in Two Acts, presented by the Melbourne Theatre Company at the Athenaeum Theatre, in Melbourne on 2 February 1978. He has since played a great many other roles on stage including the lead in Shakespeare's Macbeth.
Stanton's early television work included a stint in the soap opera Bellbird in 1972, and various guest-starring roles in the Crawford Productions police dramas Homicide, Division 4, Matlock Police, and acted in the miniseries Against the Wind. Despite having made two earlier appearances as different characters in Homicide, Stanton was cast as a regular character, lead detective Pat Kelly, in 1973–74. In his final episode, Pat Kelly engaged in a romance with a woman played by his real-life wife Jill Forster, with whom he previously appeared in an episode of Matlock Police.