{‘I uttered complete gibberish for several moments’: The Actress, Larry Lamb and More on the Terror of Stage Fright
Derek Jacobi faced a episode of it while on a international run of Hamlet. Bill Nighy wrestled with it in the run-up to The Vertical Hour premiering on Broadway. Juliet Stevenson has equated it to “a disease”. It has even led some to take flight: One comedian disappeared from Cell Mates, while Lenny Henry walked off the stage during Educating Rita. “I’ve totally gone,” he remarked – even if he did reappear to conclude the show.
Stage fright can cause the jitters but it can also provoke a full physical lock-up, as well as a utter verbal block – all directly under the lights. So for what reason does it take grip? Can it be conquered? And what does it seem like to be gripped by the actor’s nightmare?
Meera Syal describes a common anxiety dream: “I discover myself in a attire I don’t recognise, in a character I can’t recollect, looking at audiences while I’m unclothed.” Years of experience did not make her immune in 2010, while performing a preview of Willy Russell’s Shirley Valentine. “Doing a one-woman show for a lengthy period?” she says. “That’s the thing that is going to give you stage fright. I was truly thinking of ‘fleeing’ 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 catch me.’”
Syal mustered the bravery to persist, then immediately forgot her words – but just soldiered on through the haze. “I stared into the void and I thought, ‘I’ll overcome it.’ And I did. The character of Shirley Valentine could be ad-libbed because the whole thing was her speaking with the audience. So I just walked around the scene and had a moment to myself until the words reappeared. I ad-libbed for several moments, uttering complete nonsense in character.”
Larry Lamb has dealt with intense nerves over years of stage work. When he began as an amateur actor, long before Gavin and Stacey, he enjoyed the rehearsal process but acting caused fear. “The instant I got in front of an audience,” he says, “it all started to get hazy. My knees would begin knocking uncontrollably.”
The performance anxiety didn’t ease when he became a professional. “It continued for about a long time, 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 early performance at Stratford-upon-Avon. I was just into my initial speech, when Claudius is addressing the people of Denmark, when my words got trapped in space. It got more severe. The entire cast were up on the stage, staring at me as I completely lost it.”
He survived that performance but the leader recognised what had happened. “He saw I wasn’t in charge but only looking as if I was. He said, ‘You’re not connecting to the audience. When the lights come down, you then block them out.’”
The director maintained the audience lighting on so Lamb would have to recognise the audience’s existence. It was a breakthrough in the actor’s career. “Gradually, it got easier. Because we were performing the show for the majority of the year, gradually the stage fright vanished, until I was poised and openly connecting to the audience.”
Now 78, Lamb no longer has the stamina for theatre but enjoys his gigs, presenting his own writing. He says that, as an actor, he kept obstructing of his character. “You’re not permitting the room – it’s too much you, not enough character.”
Harmony Rose-Bremner, who was selected in The Years in 2024, agrees. “Self-awareness and self-doubt go against everything you’re striving to do – which is to be liberated, release, completely engage in the role. The challenge is, ‘Can I make space in my head to let the role through?’” In The Years, as one of five actors all playing the same woman in distinct periods of her life, she was excited yet felt daunted. “I’ve developed doing theatre. It was always my happy place. I didn’t ever think I’d ever feel nerves.”
She recalls the night of the initial performance. “I truly didn’t know if I could continue,” she says. “It was the initial instance I’d felt like that.” She managed, but felt overwhelmed in the very opening scene. “We were all stationary, just speaking out into the dark. We weren’t looking at one other so we didn’t have each other to interact with. There were just the words that I’d heard so many times, reaching me. I had the typical symptoms that I’d had in small doses before – but never to this extent. The sensation of not being able to take a deep breath, like your breath is being drawn out with a vacuum in your lungs. There is nothing to hold on to.” It is compounded by the emotion of not wanting to disappoint other actors down: “I felt the responsibility to everybody else. I thought, ‘Can I endure this immense thing?’”
Zachary Hart attributes imposter syndrome for inducing his performance anxiety. A lower back condition prevented his dreams to be a soccer player, and he was working as a fork-lift truck driver when a friend enrolled to acting school on his behalf and he got in. “Performing in front of people was totally foreign to me, so at acting school I would be the final one every time we did something. I persevered because it was sheer escapism – and was superior than factory work. I was going to do my best to beat the fear.”
His debut acting job was in Nicholas Hytner’s Julius Caesar at the Bridge theatre. When the cast were informed the production would be recorded for NT Live, he was “frightened”. A long time later, in the first preview of The Constituent, in which he was cast alongside James Corden and Anna Maxwell-Martin, he spoke his opening line. “I heard my voice – with its distinct Black Country accent – and {looked
