{‘I spoke total gibberish for a brief period’: The Actress, Larry Lamb and More on the Dread of Stage Fright
Derek Jacobi faced a bout of it throughout a global production of Hamlet. Bill Nighy wrestled with it before The Vertical Hour debuting on Broadway. Juliet Stevenson has equated it to “a malady”. It has even caused some to flee: Stephen Fry disappeared from Cell Mates, while Lenny Henry exited the stage during Educating Rita. “I’ve utterly gone,” he said – although he did reappear to complete the show.
Stage fright can induce the tremors but it can also trigger a full physical freeze-up, to say nothing of a utter verbal loss – all directly under the lights. So how and why does it take hold? Can it be conquered? And what does it feel like to be seized by the performer’s fear?
Meera Syal describes a typical anxiety dream: “I end up in a attire I don’t identify, in a character I can’t recall, looking at audiences while I’m unclothed.” Decades of experience did not render her exempt in 2010, while performing a early show of Willy Russell’s Shirley Valentine. “Presenting a monologue for an extended time?” she says. “That’s the aspect that is going to trigger stage fright. I was frankly thinking of ‘doing a Stephen Fry’ just before opening night. I could see the open door leading to the courtyard at the back and I thought, ‘If I fled now, they wouldn’t be able to catch me.’”
Syal mustered the courage to persist, then immediately forgot her lines – but just persevered through the fog. “I stared into the abyss and I thought, ‘I’ll get out of it.’ And I did. The character of Shirley Valentine could be ad-libbed because the whole thing was her addressing the audience. So I just moved around the set and had a moment to myself until the lines came back. I ad-libbed for several moments, saying complete twaddle in persona.”
Larry Lamb has faced powerful anxiety over years of theatre. When he began as an beginner, long before Gavin and Stacey, he enjoyed the practice but performing caused fear. “The instant I got in front of an audience,” he says, “it all started to become unclear. My knees would begin trembling uncontrollably.”
The nerves didn’t ease when he became a pro. “It continued for about three decades, but I just got better and better at masking it.” In 2001, he forgot his lines as Claudius in Hamlet, for the Royal Shakespeare Company. “It was the first preview at Stratford-upon-Avon. I was just into my first speech, when Claudius is speaking to the people of Denmark, when my words got stuck in space. It got worse and worse. The whole cast were up on the stage, watching me as I completely lost it.”
He survived that act but the guide recognised what had happened. “He realised I wasn’t in control but only looking as if I was. He said, ‘You’re not connecting to the audience. When the illumination come down, you then block them out.’”
The director maintained the audience lighting on so Lamb would have to acknowledge the audience’s attendance. It was a turning point in the actor’s career. “Slowly, it got easier. Because we were performing the show for the bulk of the year, slowly the fear disappeared, until I was confident and actively interacting with the audience.”
Now 78, Lamb no longer has the stamina for plays but enjoys his live shows, presenting his own poetry. He says that, as an actor, he kept obstructing of his persona. “You’re not permitting the room – it’s too much yourself, not enough character.”
Harmony Rose-Bremner, who was cast in The Years in 2024, concurs. “Self-consciousness and uncertainty go opposite everything you’re attempting to do – which is to be uninhibited, let go, totally immerse yourself in the role. The issue is, ‘Can I create room in my thoughts to permit the character through?’” In The Years, as one of five actors all playing the same woman in various phases of her life, she was delighted yet felt overwhelmed. “I’ve been raised doing theatre. It was always my safe space. I didn’t ever think I’d ever feel nerves.”
She recollects the night of the opening try-out. “I really didn’t know if I could continue,” she says. “It was the only occasion I’d felt like that.” She succeeded, but felt overcome in the very first opening scene. “We were all motionless, just speaking out into the blackness. We weren’t facing one other so we didn’t have each other to interact with. There were just the dialogue that I’d listened to so many times, reaching me. I had the standard indicators that I’d had in small doses before – but never to this degree. The sensation of not being able to take a deep breath, like your air is being drawn out with a vacuum in your lungs. There is no anchor to cling to.” It is worsened by the feeling of not wanting to let other actors down: “I felt the duty to all involved. I thought, ‘Can I get through this immense thing?’”
Zachary Hart attributes insecurity for triggering his nerves. A lower back condition ruled out his dreams to be a athlete, and he was working as a machine operator when a friend applied to drama school on his behalf and he was accepted. “Appearing in front of people was utterly alien to me, so at drama school I would wait until the end every time we did something. I persevered because it was pure relief – and was superior than industrial jobs. I was going to give my all to overcome the fear.”
His first acting job was in Nicholas Hytner’s Julius Caesar at the Bridge theatre. When the cast were notified the show would be recorded for NT Live, he was “terrified”. Years later, in the initial performance of The Constituent, in which he was chosen alongside James Corden and Anna Maxwell-Martin, he uttered his first line. “I listened to my accent – with its strong Black Country speech – and {looked
