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Derek Jacobi experienced a episode of it during a global production of Hamlet. Bill Nighy grappled with it in the run-up to The Vertical Hour premiering on Broadway. Juliet Stevenson has equated it to “a illness”. It has even prompted some to flee: Stephen Fry disappeared from Cell Mates, while Another performer exited the stage during Educating Rita. “I’ve totally gone,” he remarked – though he did reappear to conclude the show.

Stage fright can trigger the shakes but it can also cause a complete physical lock-up, not to mention a utter verbal block – all directly under the spotlight. So for what reason does it seize control? Can it be overcome? And what does it appear to be to be taken over by the performer’s fear?

Meera Syal recounts a common anxiety dream: “I end up in a costume I don’t identify, in a role I can’t recall, viewing audiences while I’m unclothed.” Years of experience did not render her immune in 2010, while acting in a try-out of Willy Russell’s Shirley Valentine. “Presenting a one-woman show for a lengthy period?” she says. “That’s the aspect that is going to trigger stage fright. I was frankly thinking of ‘doing a Stephen Fry’ just before opening night. I could see the exit leading to the yard at the back and I thought, ‘If I escaped now, they wouldn’t be able to find me.’”

Syal gathered the nerve to persist, then promptly forgot her lines – but just persevered through the haze. “I looked into 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 entire performance was her talking to the audience. So I just walked around the stage and had a moment to myself until the script returned. I ad-libbed for a short while, uttering total twaddle in character.”

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Larry Lamb has contended with powerful anxiety over years of performances. When he started out as an non-professional, long before Gavin and Stacey, he adored the practice but being on stage caused fear. “The instant I got in front of an audience,” he says, “it all began to get hazy. My legs would begin shaking uncontrollably.”

The nerves didn’t ease when he became a career actor. “It persisted 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 first preview 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 totally lost it.”

He survived that show but the director recognised what had happened. “He understood 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 ignore them.’”

The director left the general illumination on so Lamb would have to acknowledge the audience’s presence. It was a pivotal moment in the actor’s career. “Little by little, it got easier. Because we were staging the show for the best part of the year, over time the stage fright disappeared, until I was poised and directly interacting with the audience.”

Now 78, Lamb no longer has the energy for theatre but enjoys his live shows, performing his own writing. He says that, as an actor, he kept obstructing of his persona. “You’re not allowing the freedom – it’s too much you, not enough persona.”

Harmony Rose-Bremner, who was chosen in The Years in 2024, agrees. “Self-awareness and uncertainty go opposite everything you’re attempting to do – which is to be free, let go, totally engage in the character. The challenge is, ‘Can I create room in my thoughts to allow the character in?’” In The Years, as one of five actors all portraying the same woman in different stages 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 nerves.”

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She recollects the night of the initial performance. “I actually didn’t know if I could continue,” she says. “It was the initial instance I’d had like that.” She succeeded, but felt swamped in the very first opening scene. “We were all standing still, just addressing into the void. We weren’t observing one other so we didn’t have each other to bounce off. There were just the lines that I’d heard so many times, approaching me. I had the typical indicators that I’d had in miniature before – but never to this degree. The feeling 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 grasp.” It is worsened by the sensation of not wanting to fail fellow actors down: “I felt the responsibility to all involved. I thought, ‘Can I get through this enormous thing?’”

Zachary Hart points to imposter syndrome for inducing his stage fright. A back condition ended his dreams to be a footballer, and he was working as a warehouse operator when a friend submitted to theatre college on his behalf and he enrolled. “Appearing in front of people was totally unfamiliar to me, so at training I would be the final one every time we did something. I continued because it was total distraction – and was better than factory work. I was going to give my all to beat the fear.”

His first acting job was in Nicholas Hytner’s Julius Caesar at the Bridge theatre. When the cast were informed the show would be filmed 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 opening line. “I listened to my accent – with its distinct Black Country speech – and {looked