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{‘I uttered total gibberish for several moments’: The Actress, Larry Lamb and Others on the Terror of Stage Fright
Derek Jacobi experienced a episode of it throughout a global production of Hamlet. Bill Nighy struggled with it in the run-up to The Vertical Hour debuting on Broadway. Juliet Stevenson has equated it to “a malady”. It has even caused some to flee: One comedian went missing from Cell Mates, while Another performer walked off the stage during Educating Rita. “I’ve utterly gone,” he stated – although he did reappear to complete the show.
Stage fright can cause the shakes but it can also provoke a complete physical freeze-up, as well as a complete verbal drying up – all directly under the spotlight. So for what reason does it seize control? Can it be defeated? And what does it appear to be to be seized by the actor’s nightmare?
Meera Syal explains a common anxiety dream: “I discover myself in a attire I don’t know, in a part I can’t remember, viewing audiences while I’m unclothed.” Decades of experience did not render her immune in 2010, while acting in a early show of Willy Russell’s Shirley Valentine. “Presenting a solo performance for an extended time?” she says. “That’s the factor that is going to cause stage fright. I was truly thinking of ‘fleeing’ just before opening night. I could see the way out leading to the courtyard at the back and I thought, ‘If I escaped now, they wouldn’t be able to catch me.’”
Syal mustered the nerve to persist, then quickly forgot her lines – but just soldiered on through the confusion. “I stared into the unknown and I thought, ‘I’ll escape it.’ And I did. The persona of Shirley Valentine could be ad-libbed because the show was her addressing the audience. So I just moved around the stage and had a brief reflection to myself until the words reappeared. I improvised for a short while, saying utter gibberish in character.”
Larry Lamb has dealt with powerful nerves over decades of performances. When he started out as an non-professional, long before Gavin and Stacey, he enjoyed the rehearsal process but performing filled him with fear. “The moment I got in front of an audience,” he says, “it all started to become unclear. My knees would begin trembling uncontrollably.”
The performance anxiety didn’t ease when he became a career actor. “It continued for about three decades, but I just got more adept at masking 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 initial speech, when Claudius is addressing the people of Denmark, when my words got stuck in space. It got worse and worse. The entire cast were up on the stage, watching me as I totally lost it.”
He endured that act but the director recognised what had happened. “He realised I wasn’t in charge but only seeming I was. He said, ‘You’re not interacting with the audience. When the lights come down, you then shut them out.’”
The director maintained the general illumination on so Lamb would have to acknowledge the audience’s presence. It was a breakthrough in the actor’s career. “Slowly, it got improved. Because we were performing the show for the bulk of the year, gradually the stage fright went away, until I was confident and directly connecting to the audience.”
Now 78, Lamb no longer has the vigor for theatre but loves his performances, presenting his own verse. He says that, as an actor, he kept obstructing of his character. “You’re not giving the space – it’s too much you, not enough character.”
Harmony Rose-Bremner, who was selected in The Years in 2024, concurs. “Insecurity and insecurity go against everything you’re attempting to do – which is to be free, let go, completely lose yourself in the part. The issue is, ‘Can I create room in my thoughts to allow the role through?’” In The Years, as one of five actors all portraying the same woman in various phases of her life, she was thrilled yet felt daunted. “I’ve grown up doing theatre. It was always my safe space. I didn’t ever think I’d ever feel stage fright.”
She recalls the night of the initial performance. “I really didn’t know if I could perform,” she says. “It was the initial instance I’d felt like that.” She coped, but felt swamped in the very first opening scene. “We were all motionless, just addressing into the dark. We weren’t looking at one other so we didn’t have each other to bounce off. There were just the words that I’d listened to so many times, approaching me. I had the classic indicators that I’d had in minor form before – but never to this level. The experience of not being able to inhale fully, like your breath is being extracted with a vacuum in your lungs. There is no support to cling to.” It is compounded by the sensation of not wanting to fail other actors down: “I felt the obligation to all involved. I thought, ‘Can I endure this huge thing?’”
Zachary Hart points to insecurity for inducing his nerves. A back condition ruled out his hopes to be a footballer, and he was working as a fork-lift truck driver when a companion submitted to acting school on his behalf and he got in. “Performing in front of people was completely foreign to me, so at acting school I would go last every time we did something. I continued because it was pure distraction – and was preferable 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 play would be recorded for NT Live, he was “frightened”. A long time later, in the initial performance of The Constituent, in which he was selected alongside James Corden and Anna Maxwell-Martin, he uttered his opening line. “I perceived my accent – with its distinct Black Country accent – and {looked
Brian Hernandez
A passionate writer and shopping enthusiast with a keen eye for quality products and lifestyle trends.
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