John Wood (English actor)

John Wood
John Wood as Professor Falken in the film WarGames
Born	July 5, 1930 Derbyshire, England, United Kingdom
Died	August 6, 2011 (age 81) Gloucestershire, England, United Kingdom
Alma mater	Jesus College, Oxford
Occupation	Actor
Years active	1952–2008

John Wood, CBE (July 5, 1930 – August 6, 2011) was an English actor noted for his performances in Shakespeare and for his long association with Tom Stoppard.

John Wood was born 5 July 1930 in Derbyshire, England, and was educated at Bedford School. He did his national service as a lieutenant with the Royal Artillery, where he was invalided out after being accidentally shot in the back and later almost killed in a jeep accident.

He read law at Jesus College, Oxford. He was president of the Oxford University Dramatic Society. He had seen Sir John Gielgud as Angelo in Peter Brook's 1950 Stratford-upon-Avon production of Measure for Measure, "and suddenly knew what I wanted to do". He played Malvolio – "looking as lean, lanky and statuesque as Don Quixote," said the Oxford Mail – in a Mansfield College gardens production of Twelfth Night with Maggie Smith as Viola. He directed and starred in a student production of Richard III and invited one of the leading critics of the day, Harold Hobson, to the performance, telling Hobson that he would be "wanting in his duties" to ignore a Richard III that was "finer than Olivier's". Out of curiosity, Hobson went to the performance, and reported that he had seen "something not to be missed"; the young actor had a "sardonic, amused condescension and visible superiority complex", and the critic foresaw "a considerable future". Wood graduated from Oxford in 1953.

In 1954 he joined the Old Vic company playing a string of small roles over two years as the company staged the complete First Folio of Shakespeare plays. Wood dismissively described these roles as "the cheapest way of getting a Shakespearean costume on stage", although Kenneth Tynan thought his Lennox to Paul Rogers' Macbeth "cut like a razor through the stubble of fustian". Other roles included Bushy and Exton in Richard II, Sir Oliver Martext in As You Like It, Pistol in The Merry Wives of Windsor and Helenus in Troilus and Cressida in a company that also included many future famous actors.