{‘I delivered total gibberish for four minutes’: The Actress, Larry Lamb and More on the Fear of Stage Fright
Derek Jacobi faced a episode of it during a international run of Hamlet. Bill Nighy grappled with it preceding The Vertical Hour debuting on Broadway. Juliet Stevenson has equated it to “a disease”. It has even caused some to take flight: One comedian went missing from Cell Mates, while Lenny Henry exited the stage during Educating Rita. “I’ve completely gone,” he remarked – even if he did return to conclude the show.
Stage fright can trigger the shakes but it can also trigger a full physical lock-up, to say nothing of a complete verbal loss – all precisely under the gaze. So for what reason does it seize control? Can it be defeated? And what does it seem like to be taken over by the actor’s nightmare?
Meera Syal describes a common anxiety dream: “I end up in a attire I don’t recognise, in a character I can’t remember, looking at audiences while I’m exposed.” Years of experience did not render her immune in 2010, while acting in a preview of Willy Russell’s Shirley Valentine. “Doing a monologue 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 opening night. I could see the open door leading to the courtyard at the back and I thought, ‘If I escaped now, they wouldn’t be able to catch me.’”
Syal found the bravery to persist, then immediately forgot her dialogue – but just continued through the fog. “I looked into the abyss and I thought, ‘I’ll get out of it.’ And I did. The role of Shirley Valentine could be improvised because the whole thing was her addressing the audience. So I just moved around the scene and had a little think to myself until the words reappeared. I ad-libbed for a short while, speaking total gibberish in role.”
Larry Lamb has faced powerful nerves over a long career of theatre. When he commenced as an beginner, long before Gavin and Stacey, he adored the practice but performing induced fear. “The instant I got in front of an audience,” he says, “it all started to cloud over. My legs would begin knocking unmanageably.”
The stage fright didn’t diminish when he became a professional. “It persisted for about 30 years, but I just got more skilled at hiding 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 dialogue got lost in space. It got worse and worse. The full cast were up on the stage, watching me as I completely lost it.”
He got through that performance but the guide recognised what had happened. “He realised I wasn’t in charge but only appearing I was. He said, ‘You’re not engaging with the audience. When the lights come down, you then ignore them.’”
The director kept the house lights on so Lamb would have to recognise the audience’s attendance. It was a turning point in the actor’s career. “Gradually, it got improved. Because we were doing the show for the best part of the year, slowly the anxiety went away, until I was self-assured and openly connecting to the audience.”
Now 78, Lamb no longer has the vigor for stage work but relishes his gigs, presenting his own poetry. He says that, as an actor, he kept getting in the way of his character. “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, agrees. “Insecurity and uncertainty go opposite everything you’re striving to do – which is to be uninhibited, let go, totally lose yourself in the part. The question is, ‘Can I allow space in my thoughts to allow the character through?’” In The Years, as one of five actors all acting as the same woman in different stages of her life, she was excited yet felt intimidated. “I’ve developed doing theatre. It was always my happy place. I didn’t ever think I’d ever feel stage fright.”
She recalls 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 coped, but felt overwhelmed in the initial opening scene. “We were all standing still, just addressing into the blackness. We weren’t observing 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 signs 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 air is being extracted with a vacuum in your torso. There is no anchor to cling to.” It is compounded by the feeling of not wanting to disappoint fellow actors down: “I felt the duty to all involved. I thought, ‘Can I get through this enormous thing?’”
Zachary Hart points to self-doubt for causing his performance anxiety. A spinal condition ruled out his dreams to be a athlete, and he was working as a fork-lift truck driver when a acquaintance submitted to acting school on his behalf and he enrolled. “Performing in front of people was totally foreign to me, so at drama school I would wait until the end every time we did something. I stuck at it because it was total relief – and was superior than manual labor. 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 informed the play would be captured for NT Live, he was “frightened”. A long time later, in the opening try-out of The Constituent, in which he was chosen alongside James Corden and Anna Maxwell-Martin, he uttered his initial line. “I perceived my voice – with its strong Black Country accent – and {looked