The entertainment industry is facing an existential crisis, with less content being produced and far fewer jobs available. Luckily, Eric Roberts figured that out long ago, even before we turned to binge-watching TV as a source of pride. “They don’t give you time to rehearse now, and they pay you less,” says Roberts, who’s best known for his live-wire films. “You can’t just sit around and wait for your big paycheck anymore.”

As Roberts writes in his new memoir, “Runaway Train: Or, the Story of My Life So Far” — out now — he leaned into this new normal years before anyone else was scrambling for scarce jobs. Roberts feels that pressure, too, which is why he “says yes to everything.” “We’re often red-faced, broke, and scared. I know people who were in the cast of ‘Titanic’ (who) can’t pay their rent,” Roberts writes in his memoir.

But Roberts no longer craves fame; he just wants to work. In the book, which Roberts co-authored with journalist and novelist Sam Kashner, he boasts that he has 750 credits on his IMDb page. By the time he sat down for this interview in August, that list had grown to nearly 850. “I’m an actor first,” he says. “Everything else is secondary.”

A standout among a generation of New York theater actors who transitioned to film in the 1970s, Roberts broke into the public consciousness in Bob Fosse’s 1983 biopic “Star 80” as Paul Snider, the murderous husband of Playboy Playmate Dorothy Stratten (played by Mariel Hemingway). Roberts dissolved into his character, a manipulative small-time con man whose self-loathing metastasizes into murderous rage.

Other notable roles followed, such as the fugitive Buck McGeehy in Andrei Konchalovsky’s 1985 action thriller “Runaway Train.” The actor earned an Oscar nomination for the role, and it propelled him onto talk-show couches and tabloids. Blushing and feeling himself, Roberts bought a penthouse apartment on Manhattan’s Upper East Side and a house in Greenwich, Conn. He also began abusing cocaine. He would eventually lose the apartment and the house; the drugs remained.

But “Runaway Train” is no tearful penance for past sins, a Hollywood recovery effort meant to revive a once-vibrant career. Roberts knows all too well that he’s made terrible choices, that his erratic behavior has damaged his relationships with friends and family, including his sister, Julia Roberts (their relationship is still rocky; Roberts claims, “We made an agreement not to talk about each other’s careers.”) Still, Hollywood lore is rife with addicts who’ve thrived despite their bad habits, and for a time Roberts walked a tightrope.

As Roberts describes in embarrassing detail in the book, his fall from grace came a little at a time, and then all at once. He consistently snatched defeat from the jaws of victory, talking himself out of acting roles with the likes of Quentin Tarantino and Oliver Stone. “I was high when I showed up for my audition with Ron Howard,” Roberts says.

Roberts was undoubtedly a capricious maniac, but much of what he learned about the dark art of self-immolation came from his father, Walter, a screenwriter during the glory days of radio drama who went on to open his own theater in Atlanta, where Roberts grew up. Walter, a bitter, arrogant go-getter, encouraged his son to act but criticized him mercilessly when he did, which confused and angered his son.

Roberts’ father was a small-time con man who once tried to enlist him to rob a pharmacy for desperately needed cash. At night, Roberts’ mother would often beat him with a dowel. A blessed reprieve from the whipping came when Roberts’ parents separated. Walter was awarded custody of Roberts; sisters Julia and Lisa went to live with their mother. Walter continued to slim his son. “My father taught me a lot about the process of being a professional actor, but he would belittle me every step of the way,” Roberts says. “As a kid, it was very difficult. How do you deal with a father like that? It was hard to deal with.”

Even when Roberts somehow scraped together the money to move to New York, his father continued to pester him with an endless stream of letters alternately portraying him as an underachieving mediocrity, praising his talent, asking for money, and accusing him of abandonment. “I kept getting thousands of letters,” Roberts says. “I still have them. It was insane, man! I finally realized that you have to love people for who they are, but you can’t let them walk all over you. Even when it was sincere and loving, it felt misplaced and mean.”

Despite this epistolary “mind control,” Roberts persevered, landing his first television appearance in 1977 on the soap opera “Another World.” Roberts’ smoldering, blazing intensity caught the attention of Joe Papp, a New York theater panjandrum who cast Roberts in a Public Theater production of the Civil War drama “Rebel Women.” Roberts earned his Actors’ Equity card and went on to land his first film role as Dave Stepanowicz, the scion of a New York crime family, in 1978’s “King of the Gypsies.”

But even as Roberts was endearing himself to a wider audience, he was infuriating directors with his insistence on staying in character 24/7. “I was yelling at people for no reason, locking myself in the trailer and violently kicking the door from the inside,” Roberts writes of “Star 80.” “I began to manifest (Snider) to the point that it jeopardized the entire production and infuriated Fosse.”

After that, it was hard to shake the label of “problem actor,” especially given the hair-trigger eccentricities he so convincingly manifested on film. Roberts’ drug habit didn’t exactly help. “Blow was everywhere,” he says. “I mean, you go to the prop truck on a set and they had a big tub of cocaine for everybody. How was I supposed to get any work done?”

“I’m not sure how this all worked out for me, honestly,” Eric Roberts says. “If it wasn’t for my wife, I might be dead. I know that sounds dramatic, but it’s a fact.”

(Deborah Feingold Photography)

Roberts’s private and public lives merged, as if he were using Stanislavski’s sensory memory in reverse, recalling strange scenes from his films as material for his own personal use. His stepson Keaton, who helped raise Eric, left home as a teenager, disturbed by Roberts’s erratic and often violent behavior. In 1995, Roberts was arrested for pushing his wife, Eliza, against a wall.

It goes without saying that he didn’t just go to a rehab clinic. He was held there by court order for 18 months.

When he emerged, somewhat cleansed of his own self-loathing, Eliza was waiting for him. She pulled him up, brushed him off and ushered him into a life where he would sublimate his addictive impulses into steady work. She is Roberts’ manager and consigliere, and the combination has worked out well. This year alone, Roberts has appeared in 73 productions — a Western miniseries, a pair of low-budget sci-fi flicks and something called “My Redneck Neighbor: Chapter 1 — The Rednecks Are Coming.” He’s also a contestant on the new season of “Dancing With the Stars,” which premieres Tuesday.

And Keaton came back. A singer-songwriter and TV and film composer, he has subsequently worked with Roberts. As for Emma, ​​Roberts’ daughter with ex-partner Kelly Cunningham, Roberts says that given that they have not been involved in each other’s lives and do not communicate much, their relationship is “warm and supportive, but not close.”

Given how often Roberts has tried to sabotage his life and career, he knows all too well that it could have been the other way around. “I honestly don’t know how this all turned out for me,” he says. “If it wasn’t for my wife, I might be dead. I know that sounds dramatic, but it’s a fact.”

Eric Roberts will sign copies of his memoir, “Runaway Train,” on September 25 at 7 p.m. Barnes & Noble at the Grove in LA