{‘I spoke total nonsense for four minutes’: Meera Syal, Larry Lamb and More on the Fear of Performance Anxiety
Derek Jacobi faced a episode of it throughout a world tour of Hamlet. Bill Nighy grappled with it preceding The Vertical Hour debuting on Broadway. Juliet Stevenson has compared it to “a malady”. It has even caused some to flee: One comedian went missing from Cell Mates, while Lenny Henry walked off the stage during Educating Rita. “I’ve utterly gone,” he remarked – even if he did come back to complete the show.
Stage fright can trigger the shakes but it can also cause a total physical lock-up, not to mention a utter verbal block – all directly under the lights. So for what reason does it seize control? Can it be overcome? And what does it seem like to be gripped by the stage terror?
Meera Syal explains a common anxiety dream: “I discover myself in a costume I don’t recognise, in a character I can’t remember, facing audiences while I’m exposed.” A long time of experience did not render her immune in 2010, while staging a early show of Willy Russell’s Shirley Valentine. “Presenting a solo performance for a lengthy period?” she says. “That’s the thing that is going to give you stage fright. I was truly thinking of ‘running away’ just before opening night. I could see the way out leading to the courtyard at the back and I thought, ‘If I ran away now, they wouldn’t be able to find me.’”
Syal found the bravery to remain, then immediately forgot her words – but just continued through the fog. “I faced the unknown and I thought, ‘I’ll escape it.’ And I did. The character of Shirley Valentine could be improvised because the whole thing was her speaking with the audience. So I just walked around the scene and had a moment to myself until the script reappeared. I winged it for several moments, saying complete nonsense in character.”
Larry Lamb has contended 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 acting induced fear. “The instant I got in front of an audience,” he says, “it all would get hazy. My legs would start trembling wildly.”
The nerves didn’t lessen when he became a pro. “It persisted for about three decades, but I just got more adept at concealing 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 initial speech, when Claudius is speaking to the people of Denmark, when my words got stuck in space. It got increasingly bad. The whole cast were up on the stage, looking at me as I utterly lost it.”
He survived that act but the guide 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 shut them out.’”
The director maintained the audience lighting on so Lamb would have to acknowledge the audience’s presence. It was a pivotal moment in the actor’s career. “Gradually, it got better. Because we were performing the show for the bulk of the year, gradually the fear went away, until I was poised and actively interacting with the audience.”
Now 78, Lamb no longer has the vigor for theatre but enjoys his performances, performing his own verse. He says that, as an actor, he kept obstructing of his persona. “You’re not giving the freedom – it’s too much yourself, not enough role.”
Harmony Rose-Bremner, who was chosen in The Years in 2024, agrees. “Insecurity and insecurity go contrary to everything you’re attempting to do – which is to be uninhibited, relax, fully immerse yourself in the role. The question is, ‘Can I make space in my mind to let the persona in?’” In The Years, as one of five actors all acting as the same woman in various phases of her life, she was excited yet felt overwhelmed. “I’ve developed doing theatre. It was always my safe space. I didn’t ever think I’d ever feel performance anxiety.”
She recalls the night of the initial performance. “I truly didn’t know if I could perform,” she says. “It was the initial instance I’d had like that.” She managed, but felt swamped in the very opening scene. “We were all stationary, just speaking out into the dark. We weren’t looking at one other so we didn’t have each other to interact with. There were just the dialogue that I’d listened to so many times, approaching me. I had the classic signs that I’d had in small doses before – but never to this degree. The sensation of not being able to take a deep breath, like your air is being sucked up with a void in your torso. There is no support to hold on to.” It is worsened by the feeling of not wanting to disappoint other actors down: “I felt the obligation to all involved. I thought, ‘Can I survive this huge thing?’”
Zachary Hart attributes imposter syndrome for inducing his nerves. A back condition ruled out his aspirations to be a footballer, and he was working as a warehouse operator when a companion enrolled to drama school on his behalf and he was accepted. “Appearing in front of people was utterly foreign to me, so at acting school I would go last every time we did something. I continued because it was sheer relief – and was better than manual labor. I was going to give my all to beat the fear.”
His debut 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 initial performance of The Constituent, in which he was chosen alongside James Corden and Anna Maxwell-Martin, he spoke his initial line. “I heard my accent – with its distinct Black Country dialect – and {looked
