While attending College House Junior School in Chilwell, Beckinsale appeared in his first of many school plays, playing Dopey in "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs." As a teenager at Alderman White Secondary Modern School, he played the lead in "Tobias and the Angel" and also appeared as Hsieh Ping-Kuei in "Lady Precious Stream", which earned him a positive review in the "Nottingham Evening Post". Beckinsale left school at 15 with ambitions to become a professional actor but he was still too young to go to drama school. He spent a year working in numerous manual labour jobs, including spells as an upholsterer's apprentice, a pipe inspector, and an assistant in a grocery business.