Goring was born in Newport, Isle of Wight, the son of the eminent physician and researcher Dr Charles Buckman Goring (1870-1919), the author of The English Convict, and Kate Winifred (née Macdonald, 1874-1964), a pianist of Scottish descent who was also a suffragette. He had an older brother, Donald, who died in 1936 in a car accident in Egypt. After attending The Perse School in Cambridge, where he became a friend of an older boy, the future documentary film maker Humphrey Jennings, Goring studied modern languages at the universities of Frankfurt, Munich, Vienna and Paris.[4][5] He made his professional debut in 1927, playing Harlequin, and toured the continent playing classical roles with the Compagnie des Quinze under the directorship of Michel Saint-Denis who he would later encourage to come to England and work as a director.[5] He also studied under Harcourt Williams and at the Old Vic dramatic school from 1929 to 1932.