{‘I delivered total nonsense for several moments’: Meera Syal, Larry Lamb and More on the Fear of Stage Fright

Derek Jacobi faced a episode of it throughout a world tour of Hamlet. Bill Nighy wrestled with it in the run-up to The Vertical Hour premiering on Broadway. Juliet Stevenson has likened it to “a illness”. It has even led some to run away: Stephen Fry went missing from Cell Mates, while Another performer exited the stage during Educating Rita. “I’ve utterly gone,” he said – though he did reappear to complete the show.

Stage fright can trigger the shakes but it can also cause a total physical freeze-up, as well as a complete verbal block – all directly under the spotlight. So how and why does it seize control? Can it be conquered? And what does it appear to be to be taken over by the performer’s fear?

Meera Syal explains a common anxiety dream: “I discover myself in a outfit I don’t identify, in a character I can’t remember, viewing audiences while I’m naked.” Years of experience did not make her exempt in 2010, while acting in a preview of Willy Russell’s Shirley Valentine. “Doing a solo performance for an extended time?” she says. “That’s the aspect that is going to cause stage fright. I was truly thinking of ‘fleeing’ just before press night. I could see the exit opening onto the yard at the back and I thought, ‘If I ran away now, they wouldn’t be able to find me.’”

Syal found the courage to persist, then quickly forgot her dialogue – but just continued through the haze. “I faced the abyss and I thought, ‘I’ll get out of it.’ And I did. The persona of Shirley Valentine could be ad-libbed because the entire performance was her addressing the audience. So I just walked around the stage and had a brief reflection to myself until the words reappeared. I improvised for three or four minutes, speaking complete gibberish in persona.”

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Larry Lamb has contended with powerful nerves over years of performances. When he commenced as an amateur actor, long before Gavin and Stacey, he enjoyed the preparation but acting caused fear. “The instant I got in front of an audience,” he says, “it all started to get hazy. My knees would start shaking unmanageably.”

The stage fright didn’t lessen when he became a pro. “It went on for about 30 years, but I just got more skilled at masking it.” In 2001, he froze 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 dialogue got stuck in space. It got worse and worse. The full cast were up on the stage, watching me as I totally lost it.”

He got through that show but the leader recognised what had happened. “He realised I wasn’t in charge but only looking as if I was. He said, ‘You’re not engaging with the audience. When the illumination come down, you then shut them out.’”

The director left the general illumination 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 bulk of the year, over time the anxiety went away, until I was confident and actively connecting to the audience.”

Now 78, Lamb no longer has the vigor for plays but loves his live shows, presenting his own poetry. He says that, as an actor, he kept interfering of his character. “You’re not permitting the space – it’s too much yourself, not enough role.”

Harmony Rose-Bremner, who was selected in The Years in 2024, concurs. “Self-consciousness and uncertainty go contrary to everything you’re striving to do – which is to be uninhibited, let go, fully engage in the role. The issue is, ‘Can I create room in my thoughts to let the role in?’” In The Years, as one of five actors all portraying the same woman in different stages of her life, she was thrilled yet felt overwhelmed. “I’ve grown up doing theatre. It was always my comfort zone. I didn’t ever think I’d ever feel performance anxiety.”

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She remembers the night of the first preview. “I actually didn’t know if I could continue,” she says. “It was the only occasion I’d felt like that.” She coped, but felt overcome in the very first opening scene. “We were all stationary, just speaking out into the void. We weren’t observing one other so we didn’t have each other to respond to. There were just the lines that I’d rehearsed so many times, coming towards me. I had the classic signs that I’d had in minor form before – but never to this level. The feeling of not being able to take a deep breath, like your air is being extracted with a void in your lungs. There is nothing to hold on to.” It is compounded by the feeling of not wanting to fail fellow actors down: “I felt the duty to the entire cast. I thought, ‘Can I survive this huge thing?’”

Zachary Hart blames insecurity for inducing his nerves. A lower back condition ruled out his hopes to be a athlete, and he was working as a machine operator when a acquaintance submitted to theatre college on his behalf and he enrolled. “Performing in front of people was completely alien to me, so at training I would go last every time we did something. I continued because it was pure relief – and was superior than factory work. I was going to give my all to overcome the fear.”

His debut acting job was in Nicholas Hytner’s Julius Caesar at the Bridge theatre. When the cast were notified the production would be recorded for NT Live, he was “terrified”. Years later, in the initial performance of The Constituent, in which he was cast alongside James Corden and Anna Maxwell-Martin, he delivered his opening line. “I heard my accent – with its distinct Black Country accent – and {looked