{‘I spoke utter twaddle for a brief period’: The Actress, Larry Lamb and Others on the Fear of Performance Anxiety
Derek Jacobi endured a bout of it during a global production of Hamlet. Bill Nighy wrestled with it in the run-up to The Vertical Hour opening on Broadway. Juliet Stevenson has likened it to “a malady”. It has even led some to take flight: Stephen Fry vanished from Cell Mates, while Another performer exited the stage during Educating Rita. “I’ve totally gone,” he stated – although he did come back to conclude the show.
Stage fright can induce the shakes but it can also cause a complete physical freeze-up, not to mention a utter verbal drying up – all precisely under the gaze. So why and how does it seize control? Can it be overcome? And what does it appear to be to be gripped by the actor’s nightmare?
Meera Syal explains a typical anxiety dream: “I find myself in a attire I don’t recognise, in a part I can’t remember, facing audiences while I’m unclothed.” Years of experience did not make her exempt in 2010, while acting in a preview of Willy Russell’s Shirley Valentine. “Presenting a monologue for an extended time?” she says. “That’s the aspect that is going to cause stage fright. I was truly thinking of ‘doing a Stephen Fry’ just before press night. I could see the exit opening onto the yard at the back and I thought, ‘If I escaped now, they wouldn’t be able to locate me.’”
Syal mustered the courage to remain, then quickly forgot her dialogue – but just soldiered on through the fog. “I looked into the unknown and I thought, ‘I’ll get out of it.’ And I did. The character of Shirley Valentine could be improvised because the show was her speaking with the audience. So I just walked around the set and had a moment to myself until the script returned. I ad-libbed for three or four minutes, saying utter twaddle in role.”
Larry Lamb has contended with powerful nerves over a long career of performances. When he commenced as an amateur actor, long before Gavin and Stacey, he loved the practice but being on stage filled him with fear. “The instant I got in front of an audience,” he says, “it all began to become unclear. My knees would begin shaking unmanageably.”
The stage fright didn’t ease when he became a pro. “It persisted for about three decades, 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 first preview at Stratford-upon-Avon. I was just into my opening speech, when Claudius is addressing the people of Denmark, when my dialogue got trapped in space. It got increasingly bad. The entire cast were up on the stage, staring at me as I completely lost it.”
He endured that show but the leader recognised what had happened. “He understood I wasn’t in charge but only appearing I was. He said, ‘You’re not engaging with the audience. When the spotlights come down, you then block them out.’”
The director left the audience lighting on so Lamb would have to recognise the audience’s attendance. It was a turning point in the actor’s career. “Gradually, it got better. Because we were doing the show for the best part of the year, over time the stage fright went away, until I was confident and directly interacting with the audience.”
Now 78, Lamb no longer has the vigor for plays but relishes his performances, presenting his own poetry. He says that, as an actor, he kept obstructing of his character. “You’re not permitting the freedom – it’s too much you, not enough role.”
Harmony Rose-Bremner, who was cast in The Years in 2024, echoes this. “Insecurity and self-doubt go opposite everything you’re attempting to do – which is to be free, release, completely lose yourself in the character. The question is, ‘Can I make space in my thoughts to permit the character to emerge?’” In The Years, as one of five actors all acting as 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 truly didn’t know if I could go on,” she says. “It was the only occasion I’d felt like that.” She managed, but felt swamped in the initial opening scene. “We were all stationary, just speaking out into the void. We weren’t facing one other so we didn’t have each other to respond to. There were just the dialogue that I’d heard so many times, reaching me. I had the classic signs that I’d had in miniature before – but never to this level. The sensation of not being able to take a deep breath, like your air is being extracted with a emptiness in your chest. There is no anchor to grasp.” It is compounded by the feeling of not wanting to let cast actors down: “I felt the obligation to all involved. I thought, ‘Can I endure this immense thing?’”
Zachary Hart attributes insecurity for causing his performance anxiety. A back condition ruled out his dreams to be a footballer, and he was working as a warehouse operator when a friend submitted to acting school on his behalf and he got in. “Appearing in front of people was totally alien to me, so at drama school I would wait until the end every time we did something. I continued because it was total escapism – and was better than factory work. I was going to try my hardest to beat the fear.”
His first acting job was in Nicholas Hytner’s Julius Caesar at the Bridge theatre. When the cast were told the play would be recorded 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 accent – with its pronounced Black Country dialect – and {looked
