Nesbitt left CAI at the age of 18 and began a degree in French at Ulster Polytechnic (now Ulster University) in Jordanstown. He stayed for a year before dropping out. In a 1999 interview, he said, "I had the necessary in my head, but I just couldn't be bothered. Being 18 is the worst age to expect people to learn things. There are other things to be bothered with, like girls and football." He made the decision to quit one morning when he was trying to write an overdue essay on existentialism in "Les Mains Sales" at 4 a.m. His father suggested that he should move to England if he wanted to continue acting, so Nesbitt enrolled at the Central School of Speech and Drama (CSSD). He felt lost and misrepresented when he first arrived in London, on account of his Northern Irish background: "When I first came to drama school I was a Paddy the minute I walked in. And I remember going to drama school and them all saying to me, 'Aww, yeah, Brits out,' and I was like 'It's a wee bit more complicated than that, you know.'" He graduated in 1987, at the age of 22.