He attended Thistley Hough High School, in Penkhull, where he discovered a love for acting through the encouragement of teacher Sheila Steele. He studied for his A-levels at the City of Stoke-on-Trent Sixth Form College. It was there that he realised that his time in care would end at the end of his first year, aged 17, with the bleak prospect of a move to a working boys hostel that could end his academic and dramatic career. A solution was found through the family of his friend, Mark Langston, who fostered Neil until the summer of his 18th birthday.