{‘I uttered complete gibberish for a brief period’: The Actress, Larry Lamb and Others on the Terror of Nerves
Derek Jacobi faced a instance of it throughout a international run of Hamlet. Bill Nighy wrestled with it before The Vertical Hour opening on Broadway. Juliet Stevenson has equated it to “a malady”. It has even led some to take flight: One comedian disappeared from Cell Mates, while Another performer exited the stage during Educating Rita. “I’ve completely gone,” he remarked – although he did reappear to finish the show.
Stage fright can induce the jitters but it can also provoke a full physical freeze-up, as well as a utter verbal loss – all precisely under the spotlight. So how and why does it seize control? Can it be conquered? And what does it seem like to be taken over by the actor’s nightmare?
Meera Syal recounts a common anxiety dream: “I discover myself in a attire I don’t identify, in a character I can’t recollect, facing audiences while I’m unclothed.” A long time of experience did not leave her immune in 2010, while staging a early show of Willy Russell’s Shirley Valentine. “Presenting a monologue for a lengthy period?” she says. “That’s the aspect that is going to trigger stage fright. I was truly thinking of ‘running away’ just before opening night. I could see the open door leading to the yard at the back and I thought, ‘If I ran away now, they wouldn’t be able to catch me.’”
Syal mustered the courage to remain, then quickly forgot her dialogue – but just persevered through the haze. “I faced the unknown and I thought, ‘I’ll overcome it.’ And I did. The role of Shirley Valentine could be ad-libbed because the entire performance was her talking to the audience. So I just walked around the set and had a moment to myself until the script reappeared. I winged it for three or four minutes, speaking utter nonsense in role.”
Larry Lamb has contended with intense fear over a long career of stage work. When he commenced as an non-professional, long before Gavin and Stacey, he loved the practice but performing caused fear. “The moment I got in front of an audience,” he says, “it all started to become unclear. My knees would start shaking uncontrollably.”
The performance anxiety didn’t diminish when he became a career actor. “It persisted for about a long time, but I just got more skilled at hiding it.” In 2001, he dried up as Claudius in Hamlet, for the Royal Shakespeare Company. “It was the initial try-out at Stratford-upon-Avon. I was just into my opening speech, when Claudius is speaking to the people of Denmark, when my words got trapped in space. It got increasingly bad. The full cast were up on the stage, looking at me as I totally lost it.”
He endured that show but the leader recognised what had happened. “He realised I wasn’t in charge but only seeming I was. He said, ‘You’re not connecting to the audience. When the spotlights come down, you then ignore them.’”
The director maintained the house lights on so Lamb would have to acknowledge the audience’s attendance. It was a pivotal moment in the actor’s career. “Gradually, it got easier. Because we were performing the show for the bulk of the year, gradually the fear vanished, until I was poised and directly connecting to the audience.”
Now 78, Lamb no longer has the vigor for plays but enjoys his performances, delivering his own verse. He says that, as an actor, he kept interfering of his character. “You’re not allowing the space – it’s too much you, not enough role.”
Harmony Rose-Bremner, who was selected in The Years in 2024, echoes this. “Self-consciousness and uncertainty go against everything you’re striving to do – which is to be liberated, relax, fully immerse yourself in the character. The issue is, ‘Can I make space in my head to permit the role to emerge?’” In The Years, as one of five actors all playing the same woman in different stages of her life, she was excited yet felt daunted. “I’ve grown up doing theatre. It was always my comfort zone. I didn’t ever think I’d ever feel nerves.”
She recalls the night of the initial performance. “I actually didn’t know if I could go on,” she says. “It was the only occasion I’d had like that.” She coped, but felt overwhelmed in the very opening scene. “We were all stationary, just addressing into the dark. We weren’t facing one other so we didn’t have each other to respond to. There were just the lines that I’d listened to so many times, reaching me. I had the typical indicators that I’d had in miniature before – but never to this degree. The feeling of not being able to take a deep breath, like your air is being extracted with a vacuum in your torso. There is no anchor to hold on to.” It is worsened by the feeling of not wanting to fail other actors down: “I felt the responsibility to the entire cast. I thought, ‘Can I survive this huge thing?’”
Zachary Hart attributes insecurity for inducing his performance anxiety. A spinal condition ended his dreams to be a athlete, and he was working as a machine operator when a friend submitted to theatre college on his behalf and he was accepted. “Appearing in front of people was completely unfamiliar to me, so at drama school I would go last every time we did something. I persevered because it was total relief – and was superior than factory work. I was going to give my all to beat the fear.”
His initial 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 “terrified”. Years later, in the opening try-out of The Constituent, in which he was chosen alongside James Corden and Anna Maxwell-Martin, he uttered his first line. “I perceived my accent – with its distinct Black Country dialect – and {looked
