In Britain, classical actors are expected to subsidize the theater even more than the taxpayer. A leading actor at the Royal Shakespeare Company makes about as much money as a bank clerk. They were a part of a whole group of British actors in the '60s who made drunkenness a sort of trademark. In a sense, perhaps it saved me. The worst thing that can happen to an actor is to be hailed as a genius the first time he walks onstage.
Wood ought to know.
He had come to Oxford to study law, via a classical English public school education in Derbyshire, where his father was a land surveyor. Wood liked the education but not the old British Empire conditioning that went with it. Drafted into the Royal Horse Artillery, Wood was accidentally shot in the back during training and then almost killed in a jeep crash that left him with one leg shorter than the other and a left arm that is constructed largely of pieces of steel. In any case, the offers poured in after his Oxford production, and he wound up at the Old Vic, the predecessor to Britain's National Theatre. But that didn't work out either.