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Derek Jacobi faced a bout of it while on a world tour of Hamlet. Bill Nighy struggled with it preceding The Vertical Hour opening on Broadway. Juliet Stevenson has likened it to “a illness”. It has even prompted some to take flight: Stephen Fry went missing from Cell Mates, while Lenny Henry walked off the stage during Educating Rita. “I’ve utterly gone,” he stated – though he did reappear to complete the show.

Stage fright can induce the shakes but it can also trigger a full physical paralysis, not to mention a total verbal loss – all directly under the lights. So for what reason does it seize control? Can it be defeated? And what does it appear to be to be gripped by the actor’s nightmare?

Meera Syal recounts a typical anxiety dream: “I find myself in a outfit I don’t identify, in a character I can’t recall, facing audiences while I’m naked.” Years of experience did not leave her immune in 2010, while performing a early show of Willy Russell’s Shirley Valentine. “Doing a solo performance for a lengthy period?” she says. “That’s the aspect that is going to give you stage fright. I was honestly thinking of ‘fleeing’ just before press night. I could see the exit leading to the garden at the back and I thought, ‘If I escaped now, they wouldn’t be able to find me.’”

Syal found the courage to remain, then quickly forgot her lines – but just continued through the fog. “I looked into the unknown and I thought, ‘I’ll overcome 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 made my way around the stage and had a little think to myself until the script reappeared. I improvised for a short while, speaking utter nonsense in persona.”

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Larry Lamb has contended with intense anxiety over decades of stage work. When he began as an non-professional, long before Gavin and Stacey, he adored the rehearsal process but acting induced fear. “The moment I got in front of an audience,” he says, “it all would get hazy. My knees would start trembling unmanageably.”

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

He got through 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 ignore them.’”

The director left the audience lighting on so Lamb would have to accept the audience’s presence. It was a pivotal moment in the actor’s career. “Slowly, it got improved. Because we were performing the show for the majority of the year, slowly the stage fright vanished, until I was confident and actively engaging with the audience.”

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

Harmony Rose-Bremner, who was cast in The Years in 2024, concurs. “Self-consciousness and uncertainty go against everything you’re striving to do – which is to be uninhibited, release, completely immerse yourself in the role. The challenge is, ‘Can I make space in my head to allow the role in?’” 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 intimidated. “I’ve grown up doing theatre. It was always my happy place. I didn’t ever think I’d ever feel stage fright.”

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She remembers the night of the opening try-out. “I actually didn’t know if I could perform,” she says. “It was the only occasion I’d experienced like that.” She managed, but felt overwhelmed in the very opening scene. “We were all motionless, just speaking out into the dark. We weren’t looking at one other so we didn’t have each other to bounce off. There were just the lines that I’d listened to so many times, approaching me. I had the typical signs that I’d had in small doses before – but never to this degree. The experience of not being able to inhale fully, like your breath is being sucked up with a emptiness in your lungs. There is no anchor to cling to.” It is compounded by the emotion of not wanting to disappoint other actors down: “I felt the obligation to everybody else. I thought, ‘Can I get through this enormous thing?’”

Zachary Hart points to imposter syndrome for triggering his performance anxiety. A back condition ruled out his hopes to be a athlete, and he was working as a warehouse operator when a companion submitted to drama school on his behalf and he got in. “Standing up in front of people was utterly unfamiliar to me, so at acting school I would be the final one every time we did something. I stuck at it because it was total relief – and was superior than manual labor. I was going to give my all to overcome the fear.”

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