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Derek Jacobi experienced a instance of it during a world tour of Hamlet. Bill Nighy struggled with it before The Vertical Hour premiering on Broadway. Juliet Stevenson has likened it to “a disease”. It has even prompted some to flee: Stephen Fry went missing from Cell Mates, while Another performer exited the stage during Educating Rita. “I’ve utterly gone,” he said – although he did come back to complete the show.

Stage fright can induce the tremors but it can also trigger a full physical freeze-up, to say nothing of a complete verbal loss – all right under the gaze. So how and why does it seize control? Can it be conquered? And what does it seem like to be seized by the performer’s fear?

Meera Syal explains a common anxiety dream: “I discover myself in a outfit I don’t know, in a part I can’t recollect, viewing audiences while I’m naked.” Years of experience did not render her exempt in 2010, while performing a preview of Willy Russell’s Shirley Valentine. “Performing a monologue for a lengthy period?” she says. “That’s the thing that is going to trigger stage fright. I was truly thinking of ‘fleeing’ just before the premiere. I could see the open door opening onto the garden at the back and I thought, ‘If I ran away now, they wouldn’t be able to locate me.’”

Syal mustered the nerve to stay, then immediately forgot her dialogue – but just continued through the confusion. “I stared into the unknown and I thought, ‘I’ll overcome it.’ And I did. The persona of Shirley Valentine could be improvised because the entire performance was her speaking with the audience. So I just walked around the scene and had a little think to myself until the lines returned. I improvised for a short while, saying complete nonsense in persona.”

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Larry Lamb has dealt with severe fear over decades of stage work. When he began as an non-professional, long before Gavin and Stacey, he adored the rehearsal process but acting caused fear. “The minute I got in front of an audience,” he says, “it all began to cloud over. My legs would begin trembling wildly.”

The nerves didn’t ease when he became a pro. “It continued for about three decades, but I just got better and better at masking it.” In 2001, he dried up as Claudius in Hamlet, for the Royal Shakespeare Company. “It was the early performance at Stratford-upon-Avon. I was just into my initial speech, when Claudius is addressing the people of Denmark, when my words got lost in space. It got more severe. The whole cast were up on the stage, looking at me as I totally lost it.”

He endured that show but the director recognised what had happened. “He realised I wasn’t in command but only appearing I was. He said, ‘You’re not connecting to the audience. When the illumination come down, you then shut them out.’”

The director left the house lights on so Lamb would have to accept the audience’s existence. It was a turning point in the actor’s career. “Slowly, it got improved. Because we were performing the show for the majority of the year, slowly the anxiety disappeared, until I was confident and openly interacting with the audience.”

Now 78, Lamb no longer has the stamina for stage work but relishes his live shows, performing his own verse. He says that, as an actor, he kept getting in the way of his character. “You’re not permitting the space – it’s too much you, not enough persona.”

Harmony Rose-Bremner, who was cast in The Years in 2024, agrees. “Insecurity and self-doubt go contrary to everything you’re striving to do – which is to be liberated, relax, fully engage in the role. The issue is, ‘Can I make space in my head to allow the role to emerge?’” In The Years, as one of five actors all playing the same woman in distinct periods of her life, she was excited yet felt intimidated. “I’ve been raised doing theatre. It was always my happy place. I didn’t ever think I’d ever feel performance anxiety.”

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She recollects the night of the opening try-out. “I actually didn’t know if I could continue,” she says. “It was the only occasion I’d had like that.” She coped, but felt overwhelmed in the initial opening scene. “We were all stationary, just addressing into the dark. We weren’t looking at one other so we didn’t have each other to interact with. There were just the lines that I’d rehearsed so many times, approaching me. I had the standard symptoms that I’d had in small doses before – but never to this level. The sensation of not being able to breathe properly, like your breath is being sucked up with a emptiness in your lungs. There is no anchor to cling to.” It is intensified by the emotion of not wanting to disappoint fellow actors down: “I felt the duty to all involved. I thought, ‘Can I get through this immense thing?’”

Zachary Hart attributes imposter syndrome for triggering his stage fright. A spinal condition prevented his aspirations to be a soccer player, and he was working as a fork-lift truck driver when a companion submitted to drama school on his behalf and he enrolled. “Appearing in front of people was completely unfamiliar to me, so at acting school I would be the final one every time we did something. I continued because it was total distraction – and was preferable than factory work. I was going to try my hardest 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 “petrified”. Some time later, in the first preview of The Constituent, in which he was selected alongside James Corden and Anna Maxwell-Martin, he uttered his initial line. “I heard my tone – with its distinct Black Country accent – and {looked