{‘I spoke complete twaddle for a brief period’: The Actress, The Veteran Performer and Others on the Terror of Performance Anxiety
Derek Jacobi faced a episode of it during a global production of Hamlet. Bill Nighy grappled with it in the run-up to The Vertical Hour debuting on Broadway. Juliet Stevenson has compared it to “a disease”. It has even caused some to flee: Stephen Fry disappeared from Cell Mates, while Another performer walked off the stage during Educating Rita. “I’ve completely gone,” he said – although he did return to finish the show.
Stage fright can cause the shakes but it can also cause a total physical freeze-up, not to mention a utter verbal block – all right under the gaze. So why and how does it take hold? Can it be defeated? And what does it seem like to be gripped by the actor’s nightmare?
Meera Syal describes a typical anxiety dream: “I end up in a attire I don’t identify, in a part I can’t recollect, viewing audiences while I’m naked.” A long time of experience did not render her exempt in 2010, while acting in a preview of Willy Russell’s Shirley Valentine. “Presenting a solo performance for an extended time?” she says. “That’s the aspect that is going to give you stage fright. I was truly thinking of ‘doing a Stephen Fry’ just before the premiere. I could see the way out opening onto the yard at the back and I thought, ‘If I fled now, they wouldn’t be able to find me.’”
Syal mustered the courage to stay, then quickly forgot her words – but just persevered through the fog. “I looked into the void and I thought, ‘I’ll overcome it.’ And I did. The persona of Shirley Valentine could be ad-libbed because the whole thing was her addressing the audience. So I just walked around the scene and had a moment to myself until the lines reappeared. I improvised for three or four minutes, uttering total gibberish in character.”
Larry Lamb has faced severe anxiety over a long career of performances. When he commenced as an non-professional, long before Gavin and Stacey, he adored the rehearsal process but being on stage induced fear. “The minute I got in front of an audience,” he says, “it all began to cloud over. My knees would start shaking wildly.”
The nerves didn’t ease when he became a pro. “It continued for about 30 years, but I just got more adept at masking it.” In 2001, he forgot his lines as Claudius in Hamlet, for the Royal Shakespeare Company. “It was the early performance at Stratford-upon-Avon. I was just into my first speech, when Claudius is addressing the people of Denmark, when my words got lost in space. It got more severe. The full cast were up on the stage, watching me as I completely lost it.”
He endured that show but the guide recognised what had happened. “He saw I wasn’t in charge but only appearing I was. He said, ‘You’re not connecting to the audience. When the spotlights come down, you then ignore them.’”
The director left the house lights on so Lamb would have to recognise the audience’s presence. It was a turning point in the actor’s career. “Slowly, it got easier. Because we were performing the show for the best part of the year, gradually the stage fright vanished, until I was self-assured and actively engaging with the audience.”
Now 78, Lamb no longer has the energy for stage work but enjoys his gigs, delivering his own verse. He says that, as an actor, he kept obstructing of his character. “You’re not permitting the freedom – it’s too much yourself, not enough role.”
Harmony Rose-Bremner, who was chosen in The Years in 2024, concurs. “Insecurity and self-doubt go contrary to everything you’re attempting to do – which is to be uninhibited, release, completely lose yourself in the role. The issue is, ‘Can I make space in my thoughts to permit the role in?’” In The Years, as one of five actors all portraying the same woman in various phases of her life, she was excited yet felt overwhelmed. “I’ve grown up doing theatre. It was always my happy place. I didn’t ever think I’d ever feel nerves.”
She remembers the night of the opening try-out. “I actually didn’t know if I could continue,” she says. “It was the first time I’d felt like that.” She succeeded, but felt swamped in the very opening scene. “We were all motionless, just talking into the blackness. We weren’t observing one other so we didn’t have each other to bounce off. There were just the lines that I’d heard so many times, coming towards me. I had the typical symptoms that I’d had in minor form before – but never to this level. The sensation of not being able to take a deep breath, like your air is being drawn out with a vacuum in your torso. There is no support to hold on to.” It is worsened by the feeling of not wanting to disappoint cast actors down: “I felt the duty to all involved. I thought, ‘Can I get through this immense thing?’”
Zachary Hart points to insecurity for causing his nerves. A back condition ended his hopes to be a athlete, and he was working as a warehouse operator when a acquaintance submitted to drama school on his behalf and he got in. “Appearing in front of people was totally unfamiliar to me, so at acting school I would go last every time we did something. I continued because it was pure escapism – and was preferable than factory work. I was going to do my best to beat the fear.”
His initial acting job was in Nicholas Hytner’s Julius Caesar at the Bridge theatre. When the cast were notified the show would be captured for NT Live, he was “frightened”. Years later, in the first preview of The Constituent, in which he was chosen alongside James Corden and Anna Maxwell-Martin, he spoke his opening line. “I listened to my tone – with its strong Black Country speech – and {looked
