{‘I uttered utter gibberish for several moments’: Meera Syal, Larry Lamb and More on the Dread of Nerves
Derek Jacobi endured a episode of it throughout a global production of Hamlet. Bill Nighy struggled with it in the run-up to The Vertical Hour opening on Broadway. Juliet Stevenson has equated it to “a illness”. It has even prompted some to take flight: One comedian vanished from Cell Mates, while Lenny Henry exited the stage during Educating Rita. “I’ve totally gone,” he remarked – though he did return to complete the show.
Stage fright can cause the shakes but it can also provoke a total physical freeze-up, as well as a utter verbal drying up – all right under the gaze. So how and why does it take hold? Can it be overcome? And what does it seem like to be seized by the stage terror?
Meera Syal explains a classic anxiety dream: “I find myself in a costume I don’t recognise, in a role I can’t remember, looking at audiences while I’m exposed.” A long time of experience did not make her immune in 2010, while performing a preview of Willy Russell’s Shirley Valentine. “Presenting a one-woman show for an extended time?” she says. “That’s the factor that is going to cause stage fright. I was honestly thinking of ‘fleeing’ just before press night. I could see the exit going to the courtyard at the back and I thought, ‘If I ran away now, they wouldn’t be able to catch me.’”
Syal mustered the nerve to persist, then immediately forgot her lines – but just persevered through the fog. “I looked into the abyss and I thought, ‘I’ll escape it.’ And I did. The persona of Shirley Valentine could be ad-libbed because the entire performance was her speaking with the audience. So I just walked around the stage and had a brief reflection to myself until the lines came back. I improvised for several moments, saying complete twaddle in persona.”
Larry Lamb has contended with severe fear over years of performances. When he began as an beginner, long before Gavin and Stacey, he enjoyed the rehearsal process but being on stage filled him with fear. “The minute I got in front of an audience,” he says, “it all started to become unclear. My knees would begin trembling unmanageably.”
The performance anxiety didn’t diminish when he became a pro. “It continued for about 30 years, but I just got more skilled at concealing it.” In 2001, he forgot his lines 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 addressing the people of Denmark, when my words got trapped in space. It got more severe. The entire cast were up on the stage, looking at me as I totally lost it.”
He got through that show but the director recognised what had happened. “He realised I wasn’t in control but only appearing I was. He said, ‘You’re not interacting with the audience. When the lights come down, you then shut them out.’”
The director left the general illumination on so Lamb would have to accept the audience’s presence. It was a pivotal moment in the actor’s career. “Slowly, it got better. Because we were performing the show for the bulk of the year, over time the anxiety went away, until I was self-assured and actively engaging with the audience.”
Now 78, Lamb no longer has the energy for stage work but loves his gigs, presenting his own writing. He says that, as an actor, he kept getting in the way of his character. “You’re not giving the space – it’s too much yourself, not enough character.”
Harmony Rose-Bremner, who was selected in The Years in 2024, agrees. “Insecurity and uncertainty go against everything you’re trying to do – which is to be free, relax, completely lose yourself in the part. The issue is, ‘Can I make space in my thoughts to permit the role to emerge?’” In The Years, as one of five actors all portraying the same woman in different stages of her life, she was excited yet felt intimidated. “I’ve grown up doing theatre. It was always my comfort zone. I didn’t ever think I’d ever feel nerves.”
She remembers the night of the opening try-out. “I truly didn’t know if I could continue,” she says. “It was the only occasion I’d had like that.” She managed, but felt overwhelmed in the very opening scene. “We were all standing still, just addressing into the void. We weren’t facing one other so we didn’t have each other to bounce off. There were just the dialogue that I’d listened to so many times, coming towards me. I had the standard signs that I’d had in minor form before – but never to this degree. The experience of not being able to take a deep breath, like your air is being sucked up with a vacuum in your chest. There is no anchor to cling to.” It is worsened by the feeling of not wanting to fail other actors down: “I felt the duty to the entire cast. I thought, ‘Can I survive this immense thing?’”
Zachary Hart points to imposter syndrome for triggering his nerves. A spinal condition ended his aspirations to be a footballer, and he was working as a machine operator when a acquaintance submitted to acting school on his behalf and he enrolled. “Standing up in front of people was totally foreign to me, so at acting school I would go last every time we did something. I persevered because it was pure distraction – 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 show would be filmed for NT Live, he was “terrified”. Years later, in the first preview of The Constituent, in which he was chosen alongside James Corden and Anna Maxwell-Martin, he spoke his initial line. “I listened to my accent – with its strong Black Country speech – and {looked
