In the ever expanding industry their are more and more routes into the industry ,drama school is in many cases no longer are a must have, for many including myself drama school isn't financially an option but training ,a must have in any case, can be received from elsewhere such as NYFA, NYT and NYMT as well as weekly technical classes in specific techniques, Method, Meisner, Chekhov etc for £250, plus not forgetting the literal thousands of books on technique, practitioners and text and more. Drama school is also a very personal decision and must be based on the kind of actor and person you are ,for example on a job recently, a brilliant working actor named Jack Bence (Bad Education, Peep Show) was asked about this exact point and he replied that ,'having been raised doing film acting his acting was hyper natural and more fitted to screen work on top of this he took several courses in stage acting and dabbled throughout his youth, this enabling him to become a sound actor in both mediums', he is now represented by United and ,is in my opinion, one of the most exciting working actors in Britain today, he then went on to say that his brother, being 'raised entirely on musical theatre, had a tendency to often go over the top and be showy rather than truthful', now although by no means a bad trait as musical theatre and theatre as a whole is very often larger than life, drama school he said would teach his brother to learn how to whittle his performance down to the bare essentials. so you see for some it's great for others its not the answer. Having spoken with many casting directors on the topic many often say that for film castings often drama school graduates are very samey samey and the actors that stand out, do so because of their imperfections and kinks, however in a theatre casting the reverse may well be the opposite particularly in a classical context. Drama school can be both positive and negative but it is no guarantee ,even being at the top 10 ,a marker of greatness or future success that comes with time, perseverance and luck, I know plenty of brilliant actors who have come from both drama school and elsewhere and the same can be said for bad actors, my cousin for one graduated a top London drama school and 10 years later is now an insurance broker. Artistic greatness no matter who you are can only be found through hard work and no matter where you train the hardest most obsessed workers i'd say 8/10 times rise to the top, the top being able to support themselves purely from their Acting.