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Derek Jacobi faced a bout of it throughout a world tour of Hamlet. Bill Nighy grappled with it before The Vertical Hour debuting on Broadway. Juliet Stevenson has likened it to “a illness”. It has even caused some to flee: Stephen Fry vanished from Cell Mates, while Another performer exited the stage during Educating Rita. “I’ve totally gone,” he said – even if he did return to conclude the show.

Stage fright can cause the tremors but it can also provoke a complete physical lock-up, not to mention a total verbal block – all right under the lights. So why and how does it seize control? Can it be conquered? And what does it feel like to be taken over by the performer’s fear?

Meera Syal recounts a classic anxiety dream: “I end up in a outfit I don’t recognise, in a role I can’t recall, viewing audiences while I’m unclothed.” A long time of experience did not render her immune in 2010, while acting in a early show of Willy Russell’s Shirley Valentine. “Doing a solo performance for two and half hours?” she says. “That’s the aspect that is going to give you stage fright. I was frankly thinking of ‘doing a Stephen Fry’ just before press night. I could see the exit opening onto the courtyard at the back and I thought, ‘If I escaped now, they wouldn’t be able to locate me.’”

Syal mustered the courage to remain, then promptly forgot her dialogue – but just continued through the confusion. “I looked into the unknown and I thought, ‘I’ll escape it.’ And I did. The persona of Shirley Valentine could be made up because the show was her addressing the audience. So I just moved around the stage and had a little think to myself until the lines reappeared. I ad-libbed for several moments, uttering utter twaddle in role.”

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Larry Lamb has dealt with severe anxiety over years of stage work. When he started out as an beginner, long before Gavin and Stacey, he loved the rehearsal process but acting induced fear. “The moment I got in front of an audience,” he says, “it all began to cloud over. My knees would start shaking uncontrollably.”

The performance anxiety didn’t ease when he became a professional. “It continued for about three decades, but I just got more adept at hiding it.” In 2001, he froze 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 speaking to the people of Denmark, when my lines got trapped in space. It got increasingly bad. The entire cast were up on the stage, staring at me as I completely lost it.”

He got through that act but the guide recognised what had happened. “He realised I wasn’t in command but only looking as if I was. He said, ‘You’re not engaging 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 existence. It was a turning point in the actor’s career. “Slowly, it got easier. Because we were doing the show for the bulk of the year, slowly the stage fright vanished, until I was self-assured and actively connecting to the audience.”

Now 78, Lamb no longer has the stamina for theatre but relishes his gigs, presenting his own writing. He says that, as an actor, he kept interfering of his persona. “You’re not allowing the freedom – it’s too much yourself, not enough character.”

Harmony Rose-Bremner, who was cast in The Years in 2024, agrees. “Insecurity and self-doubt go contrary to everything you’re attempting to do – which is to be free, release, fully lose yourself in the part. The issue is, ‘Can I create room in my head to permit the role through?’” In The Years, as one of five actors all portraying 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 comfort zone. I didn’t ever think I’d ever feel nerves.”

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She remembers the night of the initial performance. “I actually didn’t know if I could go on,” she says. “It was the first time I’d felt 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 words that I’d rehearsed so many times, coming towards me. I had the typical signs that I’d had in miniature before – but never to this level. The sensation of not being able to take a deep breath, like your air is being drawn out with a void in your torso. There is no support to cling to.” It is worsened by the emotion of not wanting to fail other actors down: “I felt the obligation to all involved. I thought, ‘Can I get through this enormous thing?’”

Zachary Hart blames imposter syndrome for causing his performance anxiety. A back condition prevented his dreams to be a athlete, and he was working as a warehouse operator when a acquaintance submitted to drama school on his behalf and he got in. “Performing in front of people was totally unfamiliar to me, so at drama school I would be the final one every time we did something. I stuck at it because it was total escapism – and was preferable than manual labor. I was going to try my hardest to overcome the fear.”

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