Wood was born in Richmond, London, England. According to Contemporary Authors he attended Jesus College, Cambridge, where he was influenced by F. R. Leavis and A. P. Rossiter, and graduated in 1953 with a diploma in education. From 1954 to 1958, Wood taught in schools in both England and Sweden. After a year in Lille, France, teaching English, Wood returned to schools in England, and again in Sweden. where he met Aline Macdonald whom he married on May 17, 1960. They had three children, Carin, Fiona, and Simon.

Wood began to contribute to the film journal Movie in 1962, primarily on the strength of an essay he wrote for Cahiers du cinéma on Hitchcock's Psycho. In 1965, he published his first book, Hitchcock's Films (New York: A. S. Barnes, 1965). From 1969 to 1972, under the aegis of Peter Harcourt, Wood was a lecturer in film at Queen's University, Kingston, Ontario. In September 1974, Wood and his wife divorced. Around this time, he also had a relationship with John Anderson, the dedicatee in at least one of Wood's books. Later he was to meet Richard Lippe, with whom he lived from 1977 until his death in 2009.

From 1973 to 1977, Wood was a lecturer on film studies at the University of Warwick, Coventry, where he met the future film scholar Andrew Britton, whose influence on Wood, by his own account, was as great as Wood's on his student. Britton led him away from liberal attitudes. Wood became professor of film studies at York University, Toronto, Ontario in 1977, where he taught until his retirement in the early 1990s. In 1985 Wood helped form a collective with several other students and colleagues to publish CineACTION!.

Wood's books include Ingmar Bergman (Praeger, New York, 1969), Arthur Penn (Praeger, New York, 1969), The Apu Trilogy (Praeger, New York, 1971), The American Nightmare: Essays on the Horror Film, edited by Robin Wood and Richard Lippe (Festival of Festivals, Toronto, 1979), Hollywood from Vietnam to Reagan (Columbia University Press, New York, 1986), Sexual Politics and Narrative Film: Hollywood and Beyond (Columbia University Press, New York, 1998), The Wings of the Dove: Henry James in the 1990s (British Film Institute Publishing, London, 1999), and Rio Bravo (BFI Publishing, London, 2003).

Columbia University Press has reprinted and updated his book on Hitchcock, and Wayne State University Press has recently begun a series of reprints of his early books, with new introductions. The first in the series is Howard Hawks in 2006, to be followed by Personal Views in 2006, and Ingmar Bergman.

Changes in Wood's critical thinking divide his career into two parts. Wood's early books are still prized by film students for their close readings in the auteur theory tradition and their elegant prose style. Wood brought psychological insight into the motivations of characters in movies such as Psycho and Marnie, and Wood was admired for his tendency to champion under-recognized directors and films. After his coming out as a gay man, Wood's writings became more ... though not exclusively ... political, primarily from a stance associated with Marxist and Freudian thinking, and with gay rights. The turning point in Wood's views can arguably be pinpointed in his essay "Responsibilities of a Gay Film Critic", originally a speech at London's National Film Theatre and later published in the January 1978 issue of Film Comment. It was subsequently included in the revised edition of his book Personal Views.

Robin Wood died from leukemia on December 18, 2009 in Toronto.

Some of Wood's students have also become notable film scholars, including Andrew Britton and Tony Williams. His former student Bruce LaBruce is now an underground film director.