Ronnie Wood’s daughter has insisted she is glad her Rolling Stone father never gave her any of his £150million fortune.
Leah Wood, a professional artist, said being the eldest daughter of a rock star does not exclude her from mundane struggles such as mortgages and broken stone walls.
Ms Wood, 47, had a good taste of the high life in her younger years, which she spent touring the globe with the Stones – when she was not at boarding school in Surrey.
She went on to walk the runways as a model for Vivienne Westwood, and performed alongside David Bowie with her band, the Leah Wood group, which she has previously called her proudest moment.
These days, she lives in the Northamptonshire countryside with her investment banker husband Jack MacDonald, 48, two children, Maggie, 16, and 12-year-old Otis and three dogs.
Celebrities including her father’s bandmates, Mick Jagger and Keith Richards, attended her wedding at Southwark Cathedral in 2008, alongside A-listers such as Kate Moss.
She has a studio at the bottom of her garden, where she produces acrylic painting of blossom that sell on her website for around £4,000.
Ms Wood told the Times: ‘I have got a very normal life. My husband and I have had to work our a***s off. Having kids and stuff, our mortgage to pay and, you know, trying to find X amount of money to fix the old stone wall.’
Leah Wood with her Rolling Stone father Ronnie Wood at the launch of a private members’ club in London last year
Leah modelling at London Fashion Week in 2002, two days before her 24th birthday
Kate Moss attending Leah Wood’s marriage to investment banker Jack MacDonald in 2008
She pointed out that the celebrity children who do receive enormous handouts naturally have less of an incentive to work hard.
Ms Wood added: ‘I think my dad did me a favour there in not putting tens of millions of pounds into my bank account. Obviously my dad has given me money to like buy food some days and maybe do the occasional school bill.’
The art world is a well-trodden path amongst the offspring of the rich and famous.
Others include Madonna’s son, Rocco Ritchie, a 25-year-old expressionist painter, and Bear Grylls’s 22-year-old son Jesse, who creates work inspired by the graffiti scene.
Ronnie has also grown into a prolific artist, with Ms Wood revealing he is obsessed with Caravaggio, and sometimes drops by to give his daughter pointers on her painting.
For example, he helped out when she was painting a huge tiger’s head for Woburn Safari Park.
Another trait shared by the pair is sobriety, with Ms Wood having kicked the booze entirely, and Ronnie finally clean after eight stints in rehab.
She said: ‘I go to bed at half past eight, nine o’clock. I don’t drink at all now. I know if I did have a drink now, I’d probably suffer for three days.’
Born in September 1978, when the Stones had just finished a summer of touring, Ms Wood was under scrutiny from the very beginning.
A photograph of her in her father’s arms at five weeks old appeared in the press when the family was forced to evacuate their Malibu home during a wildfire and seek refuge in a Los Angeles hotel.
She was dogged throughout her schooldays at Hurtwood House by a fascination with her father – though said she only wanted to blend in and be normal.
And now, she said he is determined to instill into her children the same work ethic she inherited from her father.
