{‘I uttered utter nonsense for four minutes’: The Actress, The Veteran Performer and More on the Terror of Performance Anxiety
Derek Jacobi faced a episode of it during a global production of Hamlet. Bill Nighy struggled with it in the run-up to The Vertical Hour opening on Broadway. Juliet Stevenson has compared it to “a disease”. It has even prompted some to flee: One comedian disappeared from Cell Mates, while Lenny Henry left the stage during Educating Rita. “I’ve completely gone,” he said – even if he did reappear to conclude the show.
Stage fright can trigger the shakes but it can also cause a total physical freeze-up, as well as a total verbal loss – all right under the spotlight. So for what reason does it seize control? Can it be defeated? And what does it feel like to be gripped by the stage terror?
Meera Syal explains a classic anxiety dream: “I find myself in a attire I don’t identify, in a character I can’t recall, looking at audiences while I’m unclothed.” Years of experience did not leave her protected in 2010, while acting in a preview of Willy Russell’s Shirley Valentine. “Performing a solo performance for a lengthy period?” she says. “That’s the aspect that is going to cause stage fright. I was frankly thinking of ‘doing a Stephen Fry’ just before press night. I could see the exit leading to the garden at the back and I thought, ‘If I ran away now, they wouldn’t be able to locate me.’”
Syal found the bravery to remain, then immediately forgot her lines – but just persevered through the fog. “I faced the abyss and I thought, ‘I’ll get out of it.’ And I did. The persona of Shirley Valentine could be made up because the whole thing was her speaking with the audience. So I just walked around the set and had a moment to myself until the lines reappeared. I ad-libbed for several moments, uttering complete nonsense in role.”
Larry Lamb has contended with severe anxiety over years of stage work. When he commenced as an non-professional, long before Gavin and Stacey, he loved the preparation but performing filled him with fear. “The moment I got in front of an audience,” he says, “it all would get hazy. My knees would start knocking wildly.”
The stage fright didn’t lessen when he became a pro. “It continued for about 30 years, but I just got more skilled at concealing it.” In 2001, he forgot his lines as Claudius in Hamlet, for the Royal Shakespeare Company. “It was the initial try-out at Stratford-upon-Avon. I was just into my initial speech, when Claudius is addressing the people of Denmark, when my words got stuck in space. It got increasingly bad. The entire cast were up on the stage, watching me as I utterly lost it.”
He endured that show but the guide recognised what had happened. “He saw I wasn’t in control but only looking as if I was. He said, ‘You’re not engaging with the audience. When the spotlights come down, you then shut them out.’”
The director left the general illumination on so Lamb would have to acknowledge the audience’s attendance. It was a turning point in the actor’s career. “Slowly, it got improved. Because we were doing the show for the bulk of the year, over time the anxiety disappeared, until I was self-assured and actively interacting with the audience.”
Now 78, Lamb no longer has the energy for theatre but relishes his live shows, performing his own verse. He says that, as an actor, he kept interfering of his persona. “You’re not giving the room – it’s too much you, not enough persona.”
Harmony Rose-Bremner, who was cast in The Years in 2024, echoes this. “Self-awareness and uncertainty go opposite everything you’re attempting to do – which is to be liberated, relax, fully lose yourself in the part. The issue is, ‘Can I allow space in my mind to allow the role to emerge?’” In The Years, as one of five actors all portraying the same woman in distinct periods of her life, she was delighted yet felt overwhelmed. “I’ve been raised doing theatre. It was always my happy place. I didn’t ever think I’d ever feel stage fright.”
She remembers the night of the opening try-out. “I really didn’t know if I could go on,” she says. “It was the only occasion I’d had like that.” She succeeded, but felt overwhelmed in the initial opening scene. “We were all stationary, just talking into the void. We weren’t facing one other so we didn’t have each other to interact with. There were just the dialogue that I’d heard so many times, coming towards me. I had the typical signs that I’d had in miniature before – but never to this degree. The sensation of not being able to take a deep breath, like your air is being sucked up with a vacuum in your torso. There is no support to cling to.” It is compounded by the sensation of not wanting to disappoint fellow actors down: “I felt the duty to the entire cast. I thought, ‘Can I get through this enormous thing?’”
Zachary Hart attributes self-doubt for inducing his nerves. A spinal condition ruled out his hopes to be a soccer player, and he was working as a warehouse operator when a friend applied to acting school on his behalf and he was accepted. “Performing in front of people was utterly unfamiliar to me, so at acting school I would go last every time we did something. I continued because it was total distraction – and was preferable than manual labor. I was going to try my hardest to conquer the fear.”
His debut acting job was in Nicholas Hytner’s Julius Caesar at the Bridge theatre. When the cast were told the play would be filmed for NT Live, he was “frightened”. A long time later, in the opening try-out of The Constituent, in which he was cast alongside James Corden and Anna Maxwell-Martin, he delivered his first line. “I perceived my accent – with its strong Black Country speech – and {looked
