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Derek Jacobi endured a episode of it while on a international run of Hamlet. Bill Nighy grappled with it preceding The Vertical Hour premiering on Broadway. Juliet Stevenson has equated it to “a disease”. It has even led some to run away: One comedian went missing from Cell Mates, while Lenny Henry left the stage during Educating Rita. “I’ve totally gone,” he said – though he did come back to complete the show.

Stage fright can trigger the tremors but it can also cause a full physical freeze-up, not to mention a complete verbal block – all right under the spotlight. So for what reason does it take grip? Can it be overcome? And what does it seem like to be seized by the actor’s nightmare?

Meera Syal recounts a common 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 naked.” Years of experience did not make her immune in 2010, while performing a early show of Willy Russell’s Shirley Valentine. “Presenting a solo performance for two and half hours?” she says. “That’s the aspect that is going to give you stage fright. I was honestly thinking of ‘doing a Stephen Fry’ just before the premiere. I could see the exit going to the yard at the back and I thought, ‘If I ran away now, they wouldn’t be able to locate me.’”

Syal found the bravery to stay, then promptly forgot her words – but just soldiered on through the fog. “I faced the abyss and I thought, ‘I’ll get out of it.’ And I did. The persona of Shirley Valentine could be made up because the whole thing was her addressing the audience. So I just moved around the scene and had a brief reflection to myself until the lines came back. I improvised for several moments, speaking utter twaddle in character.”

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Larry Lamb has contended with intense nerves over years of performances. When he started out as an amateur actor, long before Gavin and Stacey, he loved the practice but performing filled him with fear. “The instant I got in front of an audience,” he says, “it all began to become unclear. My knees would begin knocking wildly.”

The performance anxiety didn’t lessen when he became a career actor. “It persisted for about a long time, but I just got better and better at hiding it.” In 2001, he forgot his lines 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 speaking to the people of Denmark, when my dialogue got stuck in space. It got more severe. The full cast were up on the stage, watching me as I completely lost it.”

He got through that performance but the leader recognised what had happened. “He saw I wasn’t in command but only seeming I was. He said, ‘You’re not interacting with the audience. When the spotlights come down, you then ignore them.’”

The director left the house lights on so Lamb would have to accept the audience’s attendance. 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, slowly the stage fright went away, until I was self-assured and directly connecting to the audience.”

Now 78, Lamb no longer has the energy for stage work but relishes his performances, performing his own verse. He says that, as an actor, he kept obstructing of his persona. “You’re not permitting the freedom – it’s too much yourself, not enough character.”

Harmony Rose-Bremner, who was cast in The Years in 2024, agrees. “Insecurity and uncertainty go against everything you’re striving to do – which is to be free, relax, totally immerse yourself in the character. The issue is, ‘Can I allow space in my head to allow the character through?’” In The Years, as one of five actors all portraying the same woman in distinct periods of her life, she was excited yet felt daunted. “I’ve developed doing theatre. It was always my safe space. I didn’t ever think I’d ever feel performance anxiety.”

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She remembers the night of the first preview. “I really didn’t know if I could go on,” she says. “It was the only occasion I’d had like that.” She coped, but felt swamped in the very first 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 respond to. 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 miniature before – but never to this extent. The sensation of not being able to inhale fully, like your air is being extracted with a void in your chest. There is no support to cling to.” It is worsened by the feeling of not wanting to disappoint fellow actors down: “I felt the responsibility to the entire cast. I thought, ‘Can I get through this immense thing?’”

Zachary Hart blames insecurity for triggering his performance anxiety. A lower back condition ruled out his dreams to be a footballer, and he was working as a warehouse operator when a friend applied to acting school on his behalf and he enrolled. “Appearing in front of people was utterly unfamiliar to me, so at acting school I would wait until the end every time we did something. I continued because it was total distraction – and was preferable than factory work. I was going to give my all to overcome the fear.”

His debut acting job was in Nicholas Hytner’s Julius Caesar at the Bridge theatre. When the cast were notified the production would be captured 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 spoke his first line. “I perceived my voice – with its strong Black Country speech – and {looked