‘I spoke complete twaddle for four minutes’: Meera Syal, Larry Lamb and more on the terror of stage fright

Forget Halloween! Real scares can happen to actors any night of the year. Big name actors, including Zachary Hart and Harmony Rose-Bremner, recall their worst moments – and how they overcame their fearsDerek Jacobi had a bout of it during a world tour of Hamlet. Bill Nighy wrestled with it in the run-up to The Vertical Hour opening on Broadway. Juliet Stevenson has likened it to “a disease”. It has even caused some to take flight: Stephen Fry disappeared from Cell Mates, while Lenny Henry left the stage during Educating Rita. “I’ve completely gone,” he said – although he did return to finish the show.Stage fright can cause the shakes but it can also trigger a complete physical freeze-up, to say nothing of a total verbal drying up – all right under the spotlight. So how and why does it take grip? Can it be overcome? And what does it feel like to be seized by the actor’s nightmare? Continue reading...

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