Richard Arthur Beckinsale (6 July 1947 – 19 March 1979) was an English actor. He played Lennie Godber in the BBC sitcom Porridge (along with its sequel series Going Straight) and Alan Moore in the ITV sitcom Rising Damp. He is the father of actresses Samantha and Kate Beckinsale.
Beckinsale was born in Carlton, Nottinghamshire, the youngest of three children, to an Anglo-Burmese father, Arthur John Beckinsale, and an English mother, Maggie Barlow. Beckinsale stated in 1977 that he may have been a distant relative of the actor Charles Laughton.
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.: 17  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.: 23  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.: 26-29 

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